“Whoa,” said Trey.
This Boov wasn’t even wearing the right color uniform. It was white with green and pink trim. He, it, looked back and forth, right and left. It saw us, but barely paid us any mind. Then there were more Boov following behind, wearing all kinds of colors. Many were armed, especially the ones in green, and Trey stepped backward toward a shop window. I approached the group.
“What’s going on?” I said. “Why are you here?”
“Whyfor are you here?” shouted a Boov in green, and he raised his weapon. But the one in white told him something in Boovish, and he put it away again.
“You are supposed to have gone to the Human Preserve,” said the Boov in white.
“I know. I’m trying. What’s going on?”
I saw now that there were more than a hundred Boov, all moving quickly through Roswell on foot. None of them looked happy.
“The Gorg, they established a…an outpost south of here,” said the Boov. Then it looked at me for the first time. “The Gorg are the newcomers, in the big rounded ship.”
“I know. I mean, I heard.”
“Some of our number were onto a warship, fighting forwith the Gorg. Some of we were just living in New Smeksico. We are moving away fromto the Gorg. So should you, also.”
“Are they coming?”
“They might do. And they will not show unto humans the same respect you were shown by the Boov.”
“Respect?” shouted Trey. “Respect?”
“Shh!” I said to Trey, and waved him off.
“Say,” said the Boov, stopping next to me, “you do not happens to have any cats, do you?”
My heart skipped.
“What?” I said. “No. Why do…Why?”
The Boov shrugged.
“The Gorg, they love cats. They are wanting all the cats for themselfs.”
“Why? Do they…do you mean for pets, or for food, or…?”
“Who can understands the Gorg?” asked the Boov in white. “I only thought if we had some cats, we could trade them for not killing us.”
The Boov then joined the rest, and the last of them passed by. Trey and I watched them leave.
“Hey,” said Trey, when they were out of earshot, “you have a cat, right?”
“I gotta go find J.Lo,” I muttered.
“You mean JayJay,” Trey called after me.
I ran a figure eight around a couple of city blocks, then a couple more, but no J.Lo. Then I saw a little white ghost in front of Vicki’s building just as I was going back.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“The U if O museum. For using the Boovs’ room.”
“I was looking for you.”
“I am sorry. I could not to stay near Bicki. She tried to feed to me something called pasta, which seemed to be mostly noodles.”
“Yeah. What are you holding?”
J.Lo was cradling a bundle with his sheet.
“When I left, Bicki gave me granolas bars and cans of Goke. Tip can eat the bars, and I can eat the cans!”
“Good. C’mon. Trey told me where the Chief lives, and we’re in a hurry.”
I ate the granola as we walked. J.Lo pulled up his sheet and bit into a soda can, causing cola to shoosh out the sides of his mouth and through his nose.
“Mm. Spicy,” he said.
It was a long walk. We cut across the wide streets of town until it became more trees than buildings and more scrub than trees. Before I could see the junkyard, I heard barking. It was steady and regular, more like a clock made to sound like a dog than an actual dog. But then we saw it: a big gray Great Dane, sitting comfortably, folded up like a deck chair.
“So much for the element of surprise,” I said as the big pony of a dog trotted over and stuck its nose everywhere.
Behind the dog was a high wooden fence covered in faded, peeling signs. Signs like from a circus, or carnival.
SEE! THE WONDER OF TWO WORLDS! said one.
GAZE! UPON THE ASTRONAUTIC AERODISK THAT ASTONISHED THE ARMY!
IT MADE THE OSS SAY “OH, ’S WONDERFUL!”
That sort of thing.
The fence was too tall to see any of the junk inside. Standing this close I could just see the top of a distant water tower, dry and rusty with a gaping hole in its side.
“That’s where the UFO stopped,” said a low voice.
I looked down to see a thin, dark man, like a strip of jerky—the Chief. His head was covered by a faded red cap with flaps and a strap that hung down past his ears. It looked like something a pilot might have worn long ago. He otherwise wore the same clothes as anybody else—no buckskin or beads or anything. I’m probably an idiot for even mentioning that.
“The UFO…crashed into the water tower?” I asked. Despite all the signs, he hadn’t said it like a carnival barker. He’d just said it like it was fact, and one he’d gotten used to a long time ago.
“You two the new arrivals? Got here yesterday afternoon?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Did the others tell you about us?”
“Nah. Just saw you around.”
I wondered if he’d seen us around the mine the night before.
“You drive here all by yourselves?”
“Yeah.”
“Hrmm. If you’re here to see the saucer, can we make it quick?” he said. “Got work to do. C’mon, Lincoln.”
I figured he was addressing the dog, because the big lanky thing stopped sniffing around J.Lo’s sheet and galloped back up to the fence, casting a long contrail of dog spit behind him.
“What kind of work?” I asked. J.Lo and I followed Lincoln to the gate.
“Top secret. All right. Here we go.”
Past the gate was a big yard dotted with piles of unwanted everything: halves of cars, burned-out motorcycles, rusted kitchen appliances, and what I think was an entire airplane nose cone full of hubcaps. There were bales of sheet aluminum tied together with wire, baby strollers piled high inside a Stonehenge of bathtubs, and a jukebox with sunflowers growing out of it. We were walking toward a small house in the center of it all, every inch of which was covered by pennies, and shingled with scraps of dull brass. The Chief launched into what sounded like a prepared speech that he wasn’t keen on giving.
“Behold, the wonders of the discarded world, what treasuresliewithintherustedrefuse blah blah, the grime that time forgot, seetheancient circle o’tubs that the Druids called Bathhenge, beholdthepile of doll parts that reputable blah blahs from the University of blah believe hides Egypt’s shortest pyramid, mysteriouslytransportedtothehighplains of Roswell in the year blah-blah-and-six A.D. But that is not what you have come to see, isitnowmyfriends?”