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  The colonel’s eyes brighten and he looks eager.

  “Ah,” he says, “I have a theory about that, sir. You see, we send crap out into space all the time. I don’t mean your hardware, I mean broadcasts. They must have picked up some of our television signals. What if their reception had been so poor that the only thing they picked up was an old Charlie Chaplin movie? What if it was one of those movies in which he appears on his own – just a clip – and, here’s the crunch, they thought we all looked like that?”

  The colonel steps back for effect and nods.

  “You mean,” I say, “they think the Charlie Chaplin character is representative of the whole human race?”

  “Exactly, sir. You’ve got it. We all look alike to them. They came down intending to infiltrate our country unnoticed, but of course even most Nebraskans know Charlie Chaplin is dead, and that there was only one of him. The dirt farmers see a thousand lookalikes and straightaway they go, ‘Uh-huh, somethin’s wrong here, Zach . . .’

  “So they did what any self-respecting Midwestern American would do – they went indoors and got their guns and started shooting those funny-walking little guys carrying canes and wearing bowler hats.”

  “I see what you mean, Colonel. They’re ‘not from around here’ so they must be bad guys?”

  “Right.”

  “Blow holes in them and ask questions later?”

  “If you can understand that alien gibberish, which nobody can.”

  “I meant, ask questions of yourself – questions on whether you’ve done the right and moral thing.”

  “Gotcha, General.”

  I ponder on the colonel’s words. Colonel Cartwright is an intelligent man – or at least what passes for intelligent in the Army – which is why he is a senior officer in CRAP. He has obviously thought this thing through very thoroughly and I have to accept his conclusions. I ask him if he is sure we are doing the right thing by counter-attacking the aliens and blowing them to oblivion. Have they really exterminated the whole population of Nebraska?

  “Every last mother’s son,” answers the colonel, sadly, “there’s not a chicken farm left.”

  [Gratuitous shot of a dead child lying in a ditch.]

  “And we can’t get through to the President for orders?”

  “All lines are down, radio communications are jammed.”

  “The Air Force?” I ask, hopefully.

  “Shot down crossing the State line. There’s smoking wrecks lying all over Nebraska. Same with missiles. We were willing to wipe out Nebraska, geographically speaking, but these creatures have superior weapons. We’re the nearest unit, General. It’s up to us to stop them.”

  “How many men have we got, Colonel?”

  “A brigade – you’re only a brigadier general, General.”

  “I know. Still, we ought to stand a chance with four to five thousand men. They . . . they destroyed our whole Air Force, you say?”

  [Zoom in on TV screen showing smoking wrecks.]

  The colonel sneers. “The Air Force are a bunch of Marys, sir. You can’t trust a force that’s less than a century old. The Army and the Navy, now they’ve been around for several thousand years.”

  There had never been much call for the Navy in Nebraska.

  [Back to half-frame shot.]

  “Are we up to strength?”

  “No, sir, with sickness and furlough we’re down to two battalions.”

  “Okay,” I state emphatically. “We go in with two thousand, armour, field guns and God on our side.”

  “You betcha!”

  [Enter Army corporal carrying sheet of paper.]

  “Yes, Corporal?” I say icily, recognizing her as the extra who upstaged me in the remake of The Sands of Iwo fima by obscuring my right profile with her big knockers. “I’m busy.”

  “I thought you ought to see this message, sir.” She offers it to me. “Just came through.”

  “From Washington?” I ask, hopefully.

  “No, sir, from the alien.”

  “The alien?” I repeat, snatching the signal. “You afraid of plurals, soldier?”

  “No, sir, if you’ll read the message, sir, you’ll see there’s only one of him – or her.”

  The message is: YOU AND ME, OLIVER, DOWN BY THE RIVER PLATTE.

  “Looks like he’s been watching John Wayne movies, too,” I say, handing Cartwright the piece of paper. “Or maybe Clint Eastwood.”

  The colonel reads the message. “How do we know there’s only one?” he asks, sensibly. “It could be a trick.”

  “Our radar confirms it, sir,” the corporal replies. “He’s pretty fast, though. It only looks like there’s multiples of him. He seems to be everywhere at once. He’s wiped out the whole population of Nebraska single-handed.”

  “Fuck!” I exclaim, instantly turning any movie of this incident into an adult-rated picture. “What the hell chance do I stand against an alien that moves so fast he becomes a horde?”

  “Fifty per cent of Nebraska was asleep when they got it,” says the colonel, “and the other half wasn’t awake.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Some of ’em actually do wake up a little during daylight hours.”

  “You think I stand a chance?”

  The colonel grins. “We’ll fix you up with some dandy hardware, sir. He’ll never know what hit him.”

  “But can I trust him to keep his word? About being just one of him? What if he comes at me in legions?”

  “No sweat, general,” says the colonel. “This baby—”

  [Close-up of a shiny gismo with weird projections.]

  “—is called a shredder. Newest weapon off the bench. One squeeze of this trigger and it fires a zillion coiled razor-sharp metal threads. Strip a herd of cattle to the bone faster than a shoal of piranha. You only have to get within ten feet of the bastard and you can annihilate him even if he becomes a whole corps.”

  “Can I hide it under my greatcoat?”

  “Nothing easier, sir. And we’ll wire you with a transmitter. He’s only jamming long-distance stuff. You can tell us your life story. Oh, and one more important thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have to give him a nickname, General.”

  I stare at the colonel. “Why?” I say at last.

  “Because that’s what we’re good at. We always give the enemy a nickname. It demeans them. Makes them feel self-conscious and inferior. It’s our way of telling them that they’re the lowest form of human life.”

  “Or, in this case, alien life.”

  “Right, General. So we have to give him a humiliating nickname – like Kraut, Slopehead, Raghead, Fritz, Dink or Charlie . . .”

  “We can’t nickname him Charlie, he’s already called Charlie.”

  “Okay, I take that on board. How about we call him Chuck?”

  “Doesn’t sound very demeaning to me. My brother was called Chuck.”

  “Depends on how you say it, General. If we’re talking about your brother, we say ‘Chuck’ in a warm kind of tone. But if we’re talking about Chuck, we use a sort of fat, chickeny sound – Chuck – like that.”

  “I think I understand, Colonel. Well, let’s get me armed and wired. It’s time I taught Chuck a lesson.”

  Stardom, here I come. A part with lines. My part. A lone, courageous part, if they let me play myself in the movie – providing I live to rejoice in it, of course.

  SCENE 2

  Somewhere out on the plains of Nebraska. A man is walking down towards the River Platte. The night is dark but studded with bright stars, giving the impression of vast distances and emphasizing the insignificance of the brave lonely figure. The brave lonely figure is apparently talking to himself.

  Are you listening, back there in the base? The moon is gleaming on my path as I reach the banks. Here in the humid Nebraskan night I wait for my adversary. Single combat. Mano a mano. The old way of settling differences in the American West.

  Hell,
what am I saying, we didn’t invent it. The old, old way. The chivalric code of the knights. A tourney. A duel. An affair of honour. Rapiers at dawn. Pistols for two, coffee for one.

  [Aside: We’re kind of mixing our genres here with Westerns and Science Fiction, but I think we can get away with it since the two have always had a close relationship, being drawn from the same source – the conquest of frontiers by American pioneers.]

  And I am ready. You didn’t send me out unprimed, Colonel. You made me submit to brainstorming. Masses of data has been blasted into my brain in the form of an electron blizzard. Every extraterrestrial invasion movie ever filmed is now lodged somewhere inside my cerebrum, waiting to be tapped. Any move this creature makes, I’ll have it covered. Hollywood, under secret Army supervision, has foreseen every eventuality, every type of Otherworlder intent on invading and subduing us Earthlings. They’re all in my head.

  [A solitary charred and wounded chicken crawls silently across the landscape.]

  Swines! Uh-huh. More movement up there.

  Chuck’s coming up over the ridge! Thousands of him doing that silly walk with the cane and twitching his ratty moustache. This is really weird. A swarm of Charlie Chaplins. Did he lie? Is he going to come at me in hordes? Boy, can he move fast. They’re all doing different things. One’s swinging his cane and grinning, another flexing his bow legs, yet another pretending to be a ballet dancer. Multitudes of him, pouring over the ridge now, like rats being driven by beaters.

  “Don’t let him get to you with the pathetic routine,” you warned me, Colonel. “You know how Chuck can melt the strongest heart with that schmaltzy hangdog expression. Don’t look at him when he puts his hands in his pockets, purses his lips, and wriggles from side to side.” Well, don’t worry, I hate Charlie Chaplin. That pathos act makes me want to puke, always did. If he tries that stuff, I’ll shred him before he can blink.

  He’s getting closer now, moving very slowly. He’s suddenly become only one, a single Charlie Chaplin. I can see the white of his teeth as he curls his top lip back.

  My fingers are closing around the butt of the shredder. I’m ready to draw in an instant. The bastard won’t stand a chance. Wait, he’s changing shape again. Now he’s Buster Keaton. I never liked Buster Keaton. And yet again. Fatty Arbuckle this time. I detest Fatty Arbuckle. Someone I don’t recognize. Now Abbot and Costello. Both of them. The Marx Brothers.

  Shit, he’s only eleven feet away, and he’s changing again. He’s gone all fuzzy. He’s solidifying. Oh. Oh, no. Oh my golly gosh. God Almighty. It’s . . . it’s dear old Stan Laurel. He’s got one hand behind his back. I guess he’s holding a deadly weapon in that hand.

  “Hello, Olly.”

  Did you hear that, Colonel? Just like the original. He . . . he’s beaming at me now, the way Laurel always beams at Hardy. And I . . . I can’t do it. I can’t shoot. He’s scratching his head in that funny way of his. Of all the comic actors to choose. I loved Stan Laurel. I mean, how can you shoot Stan Laurel when he’s beaming at you? It’s like crushing a kitten beneath the heel of your boot. I can’t do it. The flesh may be steel, but the spirit’s runny butter.

  Tell you what I’m going to do – I’ll threaten him with the shredder. That ought to be enough for Stan Laurel.

  Oh my gosh, he’s burst into tears.

  “Don’t point that thing at me, Olly. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to be your chum.”

  I’ve put the weapon away. He’s smiling again. He’s offering me a cigar. Hey, you should see this, Colonel. He’s done that trick, you know, flicking his thumb out of his fist like a lighter? There’s a flame coming from his thumbnail.

  He’s still smiling. He’s friendly after all, though he’s still got one hand hidden from me. Maybe he’s realized he’s made a mistake? I have to show willing. I’m taking a light for the cigar. Hell, he could be a really nice guy.

  I don’t know what this thing is, but it’s not a Havana cigar. Tastes kinda ropy, like the cigar that producer of a low-budget B-movie once gave me, when I played Young Ike. What was his name? Ricky Hernandez, yeah. Good movie that. Pity it was never released.

  Jesus, this thing is playing havoc with my throat. Can you still hear me? It has a familiar smell – now where did I – oh yes, in the Gulf. Shit, it’s nerve gas! The bastard has given me a cigar which releases nerve gas into the lungs.

  Oh fuck, oh fuck – I’m getting dizzy. I feel like vomiting. There’s blood coming from my mouth, ears and nostrils. He’s reaching forward. He’s taken my weapon. I’m . . . I’m falling . . . falling. Oh God, my legs are twitching, my arms, my torso, my head. I’m going into a fit spasm. I’m dying, Colonel. I’m a dead man.

  Wait, he’s standing over me. I think he’s going to speak. Are you listening, Colonel?

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Stanley’, and play with your tie.”

  Hollywood, damn them. He’s speaking again. Listen.

  “I suppose you think I lied to you, Olly?”

  Yes I do, you freak, you murdering shape-changing bastard. I do think you lied to me.

  He’s giving me one of those smug Stan Laurel smiles, showing me his other hand, the one he’s had behind his back all the time. He’s . . . he’s got his fingers crossed.

  “Sorry, Olly.”

  Hollywood covered every contingency except one. In all the alien-invasion movies they ever made, the attacking monsters are always as grim as Michigan in January. As I lie here dying, the joke is on you and me, Colonel. There’s one type of extraterrestrial we didn’t plan on. An offworlder just like our own soldiers.

  An alien with a sense of humour.

  FADE OUT

  MOTHER DUCK STRIKES AGAIN

  Craig Shaw Gardner

  I am a dedicated fan of the adventures of the apprentice Wuntvor and his master, the wizard Ebenezum, who is allergic to magic. I have reprinted two of their tales in the previous two anthologies, and I don’t apologize for presenting a third. If you want to track down the full corpus of Ebenezum and Wuntvor then you’ll need to find six books: A Malady of Magicks (1986), A Multitude of Monsters (1986), A Night in the Netherhells (1987), A Difficulty with Dwarves (1987), An Excess of Enchantments (1988) and A Disagreement with Death (1989). In An Excess of Enchantments, from which the following episode comes, Wuntvor has travelled to the far Eastern Kingdoms in search of a cure for Ebenezum’s allergy but has fallen foul of the witch, Mother Duck, who robs Wuntvor of his memory and casts him into a series of fairy tales, of which this is the first.

  Once upon a time, a young lad named Wuntvor travelled far from his native land, seeing the sights and having many adventures. So it was that he came over a hill and saw a bright and verdant valley spread before him. Brilliant sunlight shone down on green trees and golden crops, and Wuntvor thought that he had never seen a place as beautiful as this in all his travels.

  He left the hilltop and began his descent into the valley. But he had not gone a dozen paces before he saw a hand-painted sign hanging from one of the beautiful, green trees. And on that sign, in large red letters, someone had painted a single word:

  DANGER.

  Wuntvor paused for a moment, and stared at the sign. Was someone trying to warn him? But danger of what? And where could any danger be on such a fine day as this?

  So Wuntvor continued upon his way, whistling merrily as he studied the wild flowers that bordered the path on either side. He came to a broad field of wild grass and clover, and saw that on the far side of that field wound a lazy blue river.

  Wuntvor looked along the trail he followed, and noted that in the distance it led to a narrow bridge that crossed the wide expanse of water. Well then, he thought to himself, that is the way that I must go. But he had not walked a dozen paces before he found that a giant boulder blocked his way. And on that boulder was painted a single word, in red letters three feet high:

  BEWARE.

  Wuntvor paused for a long moment to regard the messa
ge on the boulder. This was the second warning he had received since he had entered the valley. But what were these messages trying to tell him? What, or whom, should he beware of?

  At length, Wuntvor decided that it was much too fine a day to beware of anything. Let the fates do what they must, he thought. On a sunny afternoon like this, he could best whatever was thrown in his path!

  And with that, Wuntvor skirted the boulder and continued down the trail to the bridge. He had not gone a dozen paces, however, before a large man stepped out from behind a concealing hedge. Wuntvor studied the newcomer with some surprise, since he was the largest man the young lad had ever seen, being massive in girth as well as height. The large fellow was dressed in a bronze breastplate, which was somewhat dented and tarnished, and wore an elaborate winged helmet on top of his massive head. He raised a giant club above his head, and uttered but a single word:

  “DOOM.”

  Wuntvor took a step away, being somewhat taken aback by this new turn of events. Was this the danger that the first sign spoke of? Was this what he had to beware of, as the boulder had cautioned? Yet the large man did not attack. Instead, he simply stood there, the giant club still raised above his massive head.

  “Pardon?” Wuntvor said after a moment.

  “What?” the large man asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” Wuntvor expanded.

  “Oh,” the large man answered. “Doom.”

  “Yes,” Wuntvor prompted. “But what kind of doom?”

  “Oh,” the large man answered again. “Down at the bridge.”

  Wuntvor smiled. Now he was getting somewhere! “What about the bridge?”

  “Doom,” the large man replied.

  But Wuntvor wasn’t about to give up. “At the bridge?” he prompted again.

  The large man nodded his head and lowered his club.

  “That’s where the danger is?” Wuntvor added. “That’s where I have to beware?”

  The large man continued to nod.

  “But what is the danger?” Wuntvor insisted. “What do I have to beware of?”

  “Doom,” the large man insisted.