I followed her into the bedroom.
“Great,” I said. “And afterward, we’re going to visit Chief Shouting Bear, because I promised him I would and I think it’s important to keep promises, because…because a person who doesn’t…”
Vicki’s sunny expression clouded over and turned dark. Eyebrows swooped like vultures.
“After we check up on your cat,” she thundered, “you two will come with me for an educational tour of Historic Roswell. We’re going to see the old courthouse.”
Italics can only do so much, so I’ll clarify that she said “old courthouse” like it was the number one scariest thing in the world.
“Come on, J—JayJay,” I said, nearly botching the name for the hundredth time.
“You two march right back in…get back here!” Vicki shouted. “I don’t have my shoes on!”
She followed us to the top of the stairs.
“What about keeping your promise to go sightseeing with Andromeda and me?!”
“What are you talking about?” I said on my way down the stairs. “We never agreed to anything like that.”
“Hold on,” Vicki shouted. “You just…hold on…I…”
Vicki turned abruptly and rushed back into her apartment. I watched her leave.
“Wow. What crawled up her butt?”
J.Lo looked.
“It could be any manner of things, judging by the size.”
We stepped out into the oven-baked air and walked a couple blocks.
“You know,” I said, “I think Mrs. Lightbody might be a little nuts.”
“Little nuts?”
“Yeah. You know—crazy.”
“Ah. Yes. I thought this also whento she tried to feed me the pasta with noodles. Do you know she covered it with a tomato sauce? That cannot be right.”
I saw a huge pear out of the corner of my eye and recognized it as Vicki Lightbody, dressed in a green blouse and matching stirrup pants that made a zippering sound as she walked.
“Oh, jeez. Here she comes. Walk faster.”
She had her shoes on now, and a diaper bag slung over one shoulder. In the opposite arm she cradled Andromeda, who was wearing both her Legolas Onesie and her Keebler booties. Which seemed wrong, you know—mixing two different kinds of elves like that. So now I knew Vicki was crazy.
“Wait for us!” she sang. “Our first stop is a very powerful magnetic convergence point where two ley lines cross under an Arby’s. This is where the Agarthan race makes—”
“We’re going to the car,” I said. “We’re going to see my cat, remember? You were okay with that part.”
“I can not throw the cold foam pellet,” whispered J.Lo to me. “You are not supposed to get babies in it.”
“That’s okay.”
Vicki followed us to the car wash, explaining all the way that dogs make better pets than cats, and how when she was a little girl she listened to her parents, and that using ginger ale instead of cold water when making Jell-O gives it a little kick, and did we think they tried to pack too much into the fourth season of Babylon 5? She didn’t.
I used to live in a city, so I had a lot of practice ignoring people, but Vicki Lightbody was pushing me to my limit. J.Lo and I greeted Pig and let her out for a bit while we pushed Slushious through the wipers at the exit of the car wash. We pushed right into Vicki.
“We won’t be needing your little car, you sillies.”
Andromeda wasn’t in Vicki’s arms anymore. It wasn’t hard to follow the crying to the spot near a hedge where the baby lay on her back. Pig was sniffing at her head.
“I think you kids don’t understand what’s happening,” said Vicki. “We can’t all go around doing our own thing and…and changing everything! Children do not drive cars. They do not visit old Indians in junkyards. How can things go back to normal when everyone keeps changing everything?”
I decided that was one of those rhetorical questions. I scooped Pig up again and put her safely back in the car. I had a feeling we might have to make a break for it at any moment.
“All my life…all my life I’ve waited for the aliens to come, and now they’re here!” she said. “Now they’re here!”
She was more right than she knew. As she spoke, two crablike monsters the size of gas grills scuttled down a distant avenue. Then one of them turned away and headed straight for us.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Vicki creaked. “My aliens don’t push people around and cause families to break up, make people move and desert their wives and daughters! My aliens are nicer.”
The creature paused right behind her. It was some awful mixture of meat and machine, and I wasn’t at all surprised when J.Lo whispered that it was a robot sent by the Gorg. It was green and purple all over, with a back end that formed a round cage. And in the cage were two stray cats, shivering in the heat.
It was a small yowl from one of these cats that made Vicki Lightbody turn around, and when she saw the crab robot, she gave a squeak and rushed over to clutch Andromeda to her chest.
A scooped-out section at the front of the robot crackled to life and projected a moving image of what I guessed was the head of a Gorg. The reception was terrible.
“A MESSAGE FROM THE ASSISTANT REGIONAL DEVASTATOR GORG THREE-GORGS!” the head said in a tinny roar. “A MESSAGE FROM THE ASSISTANT REGIONAL DEVASTATOR GORG THREE-GORGS! A MESSAGE FROM THE ASSIS—MESSAGE BEGINS. HUMANS! YOU ARE HEARING THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE A CAT OR CATS WAS RECENTLY DETECTED IN YOUR AREA! ARE YOU IN POSSESSION OF A CAT OR CATS, OR KNOW WHERE A CAT OR CATS CAN BE FOUND?”
I looked quickly at J.Lo, then at Mrs. Lightbody. She was staring back at me and…smiling? I held my breath.
“YOUR REPLY WAS NOT UNDERSTOOD. TO CONTINUE IN ENGLISH SAY ENGLISH! GU POZGIZLU IZ NIMROG, FEL—”
“Uh, English!” I said.
“ARE YOU IN POSSESSION OF A CAT OR CATS, OR KNOW WHERE A CAT OR CATS—”
“No!” I said, and hoped Pig had the sense to stay low. The robot apparently couldn’t detect her inside the car.
J.Lo said no, too. Vicki didn’t say anything.
“ALL MUST ANSWER!” said the robot, and turned its flickering Gorg face toward Vicki. “ARE YOU IN POSSESSION OF A CAT OR CATS, OR KNOW WHERE A CAT OR CATS CAN BE FOUND?”
“Well, now, let me think…” said Vicki, smirking like she was eating cake in front of orphans.