and garlanded, singing apsaras. A row of trunkless stucco elephants guarded a gateway to another paddy field. Every part of the ruined city had been girded round with a saisin, a sacred rope that had been strung up along the walls and along the stumps of the elephant trunks and through the stone portals and finally into the folded palms of the spirit doctor himself, who sat in the lotus position on a woven rush mat, surrounded by a cloud of incense. “You’ re late,” he said angrily as we hastened to seat ourselves within the protected'circle. “Get inside, inside. Or do you want to be swallowed up by spirits?” If I thought Phii Lek’s actions bizarre Some of the aliens aren ’t ending up imthe bodies they were destined for The military ruler of nine star systems doesn ’t want to get thrust into the body of a leprous janitor from Milwaukee. That is precisely what happened last week. before, his performance now shifted into an even more hyperbo lic gear. He groaned. He danced about, his body coiling and uncoiling like a serpent. I heard my grandmother cry out, “ Ui ta then\ Nuns dropping in the basement!” It was the strongest language I ’d ever heard her use. Mary clutched my hand. Some of my relatives stared disapprovingly at the impropriety, but I decided that they were just jealous. “And now we’ ll see which it is to be,” Mary said. “ Science fiction or fantasy.” “ He’s mumbling himself into a trance now,” I said, pointing to the exorcist, who had closed his eyes and from whose lips a strange buzzing issued. “Are you sure he’s not snoring?” one of my mothers said maliciously. “ What tranquility! What perfect sa- madhil” my other mother said admiringly, for the spirit doctor hadn’t moved a muscle in some ten minutes. Ph ii L e k ’s c o n to r t io n s became positively unnerving. He darted about the sacred circle, now and then flapping his arms as though to fly. Suddenly, a bellow—like the cry of an angry water buffalo—burst from his lips. He flapped again and again—and then rose into the air! “ Be still, I command thee!” the exorcist’s voice thundered, and he waved a rattle at my levitating brother and made mysterious passes. “ I tell thee, be still!” A ray of light shot upward from the earth, dazzlingly bright. The pagodas were lit up eerily. The ground opened up under Phii Lek as he hovered. There he was, brilliantly lit up in the pillar of radiance, with an iridiscent aura around him whose outlines vaguely resembled an enormous cockroach. The crowd was going wild now. They clamored, they cheered; some of the children were disobeying the sacred cord and having to be restrained by their elders. My brother was sitting, in lotus position, in the middle of the air with his The ground opened up under Phii Lek as he hovered. There he was, brilliantly lit up in the pillar of radiance, with an iridiscent aura around him whose outlines vaguely resembled an enormous cockroach. palms folded, looking just like a postcard of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok. The flaming apparition that had been my brother descended into the pit. We all rushed to the edge. The light from the abyss burned our eyes; we were blinded. Mary took advantage of the confusion to embrace me tightly; I was too overwhelmed to castigate her. We waited. The earth rumbled. At last a figure crawled out. He was covered in mud and filth. He was clutch- in g s o m e t h i n g u n d e r h is arm . . .something very much like a Ming spittoon. “ Phii Lek!” I cried out, overcome with relief that he was still alive. “ The tachyon calibrator—” he gasped, holding aloft the spittoon and waving it dramatically in the air. “You must get it to . . . ” He fainted, still clasping the alien device firmly to his bosom. The light shifted. . . the ghostly, rainbow-fringed giant cockroach seemed to drift slowly across the field, toward the unmoving figure of the exorcist. . . it danced grotesquely above his head, and he began to twitch and foam at the mouth. . . . “ I ’ ll be d ea d !” my g randmo ther shouted. “The spirit is transferring itself into the body of the exorcist!” In a moment the exorcist too fainted, and the sacred cord fell from his hands. The circle was broken. Whatever was done was done. I rushed to the side of my brother, still lying prone by the side of the abyss. “ Wake up !” I said, shaking him. “ Please wake up!” He got up and grinned. Applause broke out. The exorcist, too, seemed to be recovering from his ordeal. “And now,” my brother said, holding out the alien artifact, “ I can return this thing to the person who was sent to fetch it.” A small, white, palpitating hand was stretched forward to receive it. I turned to see who it was. “Oh, no," I said softly. For it was Mary who had taken the artifact. . . and Mary who was now gyrating about the paddy field in a most unfeminine, most cockroachlike manner. Later that night, Phii Lek and I sat on the floor of our room, waiting for Mary to snap out of her extraterrestrial seizure so we could find out what had happened. Toward dawn the alien gave her her first break. “ I can talk now,” she said suddenly, calmly. “ Do you need chilies?” I said. “ I think a good hamburger would be more my style,” she said. “We can probably fake it,” my brother said, “ if you don’t mind having it on rice instead of a bun.” “Well,” she said, when my brother had finished clattering about the kitchen, fixing this unorthodox meal, and she was sitting cross-legged on my bedding, munching furiously, “ I suppose I should tell you what I’m allowed to tell you.” “ Take your time,” I said, not meaning it. “Okay. Well, as you know, the exorcist is a total fake, a charlatan, a mountebank. But he does enter a passable state of samadhi, and apparently this was close enough to the psychic null state necessary for psychic transference to enable a mindswap to occur over a short distance. His blank mind was a sort of catalyst, if you will, through which, under the influence of the tachyon calibrator, I could leave Phii Lek’s mind and enter Mary’s.” “So you’ ll be taking the spittoon back to America?” I said. “ Right on schedule. And it’s not a spittoon. That happens to be a very clever disguise.” “S o . . . ” It suddenly occurred to me that she would soon be leaving. I was irritated at that. I didn’t know why. I should have been pleased, because, after all, I had essentially traded her for my brother, and family always comes first. “ Look,” she said, noticing my unease, “ do you th in k . . . maybe . . . one last time?” She caressed my arm. “ But you’re a giant cockroach!” I said. She kissed me. “You’ve been bragging to your friends all month about ‘arriving’ in America,” she said. “ How’d you like to ‘arrive’ on another planet?” I n the middle of the act I became JL aware that someone else was there with us. I mean, I was used to the way Mary moved, the delicious abandon with which she made her whole body shudder. I thought, “The alien’s here too! Well, I’m really going to show it how a Thai can drive. Here we go!” The next morning I said, “ How was it?” She said, “ It was a fascinating activity, but frankly I prefer mitosis.” Fiddling for water buffaloes. I n a day or so I saw her off; I went JLback to the antique’store; I found my grandmother hard at work in her antiquefaking studio. A perfect Ming spittoon lay beside her where she squatted. She saw me, spat out her betel nut, and motioned me to sit. “Why, Grandmother,” I said, “ That’s a perfect copy of whatever it was the alien took to America.” “ Look again, my grandson,” she said, and chuckled to herself as she rocked back and forth kneading clay. I picked it up. The morning light shone on it through the window. I had an inkling that. . .no. Surely not. “You didn’t ! ” I said. She didn’t answer. “ Grandmother.. . ” No answer. “ But the solar system is at stake!” I blurted out. “ If they find out that they’ve got the wrong tachyon ca librator.. . ” “ Maybe, maybe not,” said my grandmother. “ The way I think is this: it’s obviously very important to someone, and anything that valuable is worth faking. You say these interstellar diplomats will be arguing the question for years, perhaps. Well, as the years go by, the price will undoubtedly go up.” “ But khun yaai, how can you possibly play games with the destiny of the entire human race like this?” “ Oh, come, come. I’m just an old woman looking out for her family. The movie house has been sold, and we’ve lost maybe 50,000 baht on the exorcism and the feast. Besides, your father will insist on another wife, I’m afraid, and after all this brouhaha I can’t blame him. We’ ll be out 100,000 baht by the time we’re through. I have a perfect right to some kind of recompense. Hopefully, by the time they come looking for this thing, we’ ll be able to get enough for it to open a whole antique factory. . .who knows, move to Bangkok. . .buy up Channel Seven so your brother can dub movies to his heart’s content.” “ But couldn’t the alien tell?” I said. “ Of course not. How many experts on disguised tachyon calibrators do you think there are, anyway?” My grandmother paused to turn the electric fan so that it blew exclusively on herself. The air conditioning, as usual, was off. “Anyway, manus tang dao are only another kind of foreigner, and anyone can tell you that all foreigners are suckers.” I heard the bell ring in the front. “ Go o n ! ” she sa id . “ T he re ’s a customer!” “ But what if—” I got up with some trepidation. At the partition I hesitated. “ Courage!” she whispered. “ Be a luk phuchail” I remembered that I had the family honor to think of. Boldly, I marched out to meet the next customer. Writer Somtow Sucharitkul was born in Bangkok and resides in the U.S. Twice nominated for science-fiction ’s Hugo Award, he won the Locus award for his first novel, Starship and Haiku. His works include Mallworld, the Inquestor Tetralogy and under the name S.M. Somtow, Vampire Junction and The Shattered Horse. This story is reprinted from Tales from the Planet Earth, a novel with nineteen authors created by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull—copyright ®1986. Available from St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Artist Carl Smool lives in Seattle. He is a frequent contributor to CSQ. 22 Clinton St. Quarterly
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