Agent to the Stars Part 2

"I won't," the gunk that was apparently called Joshua agreed. "I'm a good alien, not like those bad aliens that make for such good movies. Please, Tom, sit down."

I didn't know which was more fundamentally disturbing: that Jell-O was talking to me, that it had a sense of humor, or that it had better manners than I did. My body sat down in my seat; the man in my brain readied himself for a sprint to the door.

"Thank you," Carl said. "Here's the short version: About four months ago, the Yherajk, of which my friend Joshua is a member of, contacted me. The Yherajk have been watching us here on Earth for a while, and they decided recently that after several years of observation, it was time to make themselves known to humanity. But they have concerns."

"We look like snot," Joshua said. "And we smell like dead fish."

Carl nodded in Joshua's direction. "The Yherajk are worried that their physical appearance will present problems."

"We have seen The Blob, and it is us," Joshua intoned.

Another nod from Carl. "The Yherajk have decided that before they can appear to humanity, some arrangements have to be made -- a way has to be made for them not to appear so ugly from the outset."

"We need an agent to get us the role of the friendly aliens," Joshua said.

"That's the short version," Carl said.

I sat there for a second, trying to process the information. "Can I ask a question?" I said.

"Shoot," said Joshua.

I looked at Joshua and for a moment I was frozen. I didn't know what part of it to address. It all looked the same. I dealt with it by looking straight at its center. "Dumb question first: Why didn't you just drop on the lawn of the White House? I mean, in the movies, that's pretty much how it was done."

"We thought about it," Joshua said. "Then we caught the Presidential debates. The people you folks elect are sort of scary. And you Americans are the folks that do it the best on this entire planet. Besides, your president only speaks for Americans. American movies speak for your world. Who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz? Or Jaws? Or Star Wars? We've seen them, and we're not even from this planet." Joshua sprouted a tendril and tapped the table. "If you want to introduce yourself to the planet, this is the place to start."

"Okay," I said. I looked over at Carl. "The....Earjack --"

"Yherajk," Carl said, p.r.o.nouncing it yee-heer-aahg-k.

"It's not our real name," Joshua said, "but you couldn't p.r.o.nounce what we're actually called."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well, for one thing, it's a smell," Joshua said. "Would you like to smell it?"

I glanced at Carl. He shrugged. "Sure," I said.

The room filled with a stench that resembled the offspring of a rotted sneaker and Velveeta. I gagged involuntarily.

"G.o.d, that's horrible," I said, and immediately regretted it. "I'm very sorry," I said. "That was probably the first ever insult to an extraterrestrial. I apologize."

"No offense taken," Joshua said, mildly. "You should come to a Yherajk get-together. It's like a convention of farts."

"I believe there was a question at the beginning of all this," Carl said.

"Right," I said, and looked back to Carl. "How many people know about the Yherajk?"

"Including you and me?" Carl said.

"Yes," I said.

"Two," Carl said. "Well, and a couple thousand Yherajk orbiting the planet. But among humans, it's just you and me."

"Wow," I said.

"It's not that hard to believe," Joshua said. "If you run out of here and say that you've just met an alien that looks like gelatin and smells like a cat in heat, who's going to believe you? All the really believable aliens have spines."

I ignored this. "Carl, why me?"

Carl tilted his head at me, and regarded me like a favored child. Which, perhaps, I was. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, I'm flattered that you picked me to help you to do...." I waved my hands around, "whatever it is that we're going to be doing here. But I don't know why you picked me."

"Well, it's like I said," Carl said. "I need someone who's smart and that I can trust."

"I appreciate that," I said. "But Carl, you don't even know me. I've worked here for five years, and every other time we've spoken, it was in meetings, about our clients and how we were going to package them. And that wasn't that often."

"Do you feel neglected?" Carl asked. "I wouldn't have pegged you for that."

"No, that's not it," I said. "It's never bothered me. That's not what I mean. What I mean is that I don't know why you feel you can trust me, or why you think I'm smart. You can, and I am, but I wouldn't have thought I'd be an obvious choice. I'm surprised you even thought of me."

Carl smirked, looked off for a second, as if communicating to an unseen audience, and then turned back to me. "Tom," he said, "give me some credit for knowing something about the people who I employ."

I straightened up slightly. "I didn't mean to offend you, Carl."

"You haven't," he said. "My point here is simply that I've been aware of you and your work for this company. Your works speaks quite a bit as to the person you are, and as for the rest of it..." he shrugged. "Sometimes you take a chance."

"Thanks," I said.

"Also, to be blunt," Carl continued, "you're just a junior agent here. You're flying under the radar. If any of the senior agents suddenly divested himself of his clients and started sneaking around, it would be noticed. There would be gossip. Infighting. Stories in Variety and the Times. No one's going to notice or care if you do the same thing."

It was my turn to smirk. "Well, my mother might be concerned."

"Does she write for the Times?" Carl said.

"I don't think so," I said. "She lives in Arizona."

"Well, then," Carl said. "That's fine with me."

"I'm still confused as to why you need me," I said. "Certainly you don't need me to put something together."

"But I do," Carl said. "Because I can't."

"Tom," Joshua said, "If it would throw the company in turmoil if one of the senior agents here dropped what they're doing to start working on a secret project, how much more suspicious is it going to look if Carl did it?"

"I can't even take a vacation without someone here attempting a palace coup," Carl said. "There's no way I'm going to be able to stop running this place to look after this. No, someone else has to deal with this thing. You've got the job."

"Carl, I don't even know what the job is," I said.

"Make me beautiful," Joshua said. "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."

"The Job," Carl said, implying the capital "J" with his voice, "Is to find some way to prepare the planet for the presence of the Yherajk. They're ready to show themselves to humanity, Tom. You have to make humanity ready for them."

The words hung out there in the air for a minute, not unlike, I suppose, the fragrance of a Yherajk conversation -- invisible, but very hard to ignore.

"I'm just guessing here," Joshua said, "But I'm thinking this is probably where you say 'Holy s.h.i.+t' again, Tom."

Chapter Four.

Miranda was being monopolized by Ben Fleck, another junior agent, when I returned. She glanced at me pointedly as I walked by. The glance had a double meaning. The first was whatthe h.e.l.l happened in there? The second was Rescue me. Ben was a first cla.s.s jerk who had been trying for 18 months to get into Miranda's pants; it would have const.i.tuted s.e.xual hara.s.sment except that Ben was so obviously inept at it.

"Miranda," I said, "Could you please come to my office?"

"Hey," Ben said. "I'm discussing a client with Miranda at the moment."

"That client is in your pants, Ben," I said. "And he's never going to get the job. Miranda?" I held the door open for her as she took her notepad and walked by me into my office.

"Thank you," she said, as I closed the door behind us. "Though you shouldn't be so rough on Ben. He's sort of sweet, in his own lecherous, oafish way."

"Nonsense," I said. "I'm not going to let him get away with anything I'm not allowed to get away with."

"But Tom," Miranda said. "you're neither lecherous nor oafish. "

"Thanks, Miranda," I said, and leaned against my desk. "I'll put that on my gravestone. 'Here lies Thomas Stein. He was neither lecherous nor oafish.'"

"Enough chitchat," Miranda said. "Do you still have a job, or are you just putting on a brave face for your devoted staff?"

"Miranda, did anyone pay attention to where we were going when we went to the meeting?"

Miranda sat in the chair in front of my desk and thought for a moment. "Not that I could tell. You nodded to Drew Roberts as we walked past him, but don't think he noticed. You're a junior agent. You don't rate a nod back."

"Good," I said. "Did anyone ask where I was?"

"In the office? No. Mich.e.l.le called again," Miranda crossed her eyes slightly at the word Mich.e.l.le, indicating in her own subtle way that she believed Mich.e.l.le to be less intelligent than the average protozoan, "but I just told her you were in a meeting. Other than that, my attention was monopolized by Ben, who loathes you and would not ask about you even if he could get a promotion out of it. Why?"

"If anyone asks, I was just out to get a bagel, okay?"

"You're killing me," Miranda said. "I don't normally threaten my bosses, but if you don't tell me what happened in there, I may have to hurt you."

"I can't, Miranda. You know if I could tell anyone, I could tell you." I gave her my best I'm-utterly-helpless look. "I just can't. Just trust me for now, please, and just forget that meeting ever took place?"

Miranda looked at me for a minute. "Okay, Tom," she said, finally. "But if we're not going to talk about the meeting that didn't take place, why did you call me in here?"

"I need you to get my files on everyone I represent. Also, give me the names of the latest agents up from the mailroom, and their client lists, if you can."

Miranda jotted on her notepad. "All right," she said. "Anything in particular I should look for in the new agents?"

"I want someone who is so new that he still could do his mail route with his eyes closed. Someone who doesn't know anything. Me, about three years ago."

"Young and naive. Got it, Tom. Actually, I know just the person."

"Great. Give me about an hour with my files and then have them come for a visit."

"Fine. Anything else?"

"Yes. I'm going to need one of those watercooler bottles. And a dolly."

Miranda looked up from her notepad. "A watercooler bottle?"

"Yeah. One of those Arrowhead Water bottles. The five gallon ones."

"And a dolly."

"If you can find one. They have them in the mailroom, I think. You can have the new agent retrieve it."

I could see Miranda debating with herself whether or not she wanted to ask what the water bottle was for. She finally decided against it. What a pro. "Do you want the water bottle empty or full?"

"Doesn't matter," I said.

"It does to me," she said. "I have to lug the d.a.m.n thing to your office."

"Empty, please."

She stopped writing. "Okay," she said. "You'll have your files in just a minute." She stood up and walked over the two steps to where I was. I stopped leaning on the desk and stood up. "Tom," she said, "You can trust me; I'll never speak of that meeting in front of anyone. But whatever happened in that meeting, congratulations." She reached over and tousled my hair. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned and matronly move from someone who was my a.s.sistant, and a year younger than I was. It made me grin like an idiot.

Miranda dropped the files on my desk. It was now time to play everybody's favorite game: Ditch the clients.

"This thing is going to take up all of your time from now on," Carl had warned, right after I had signed up for the ride. "You're going to have to formulate a plan and execute it. You're going to have to be an aide to Joshua, as well. Which reminds me: he needs to stay at your place."

"What?" I said. Visions of slug slime coating my upholstery leapt, unbidden, into my mind.

"Tom," Joshua said, "it's not exactly an easy commute between here and the s.h.i.+p."

"We can work out the details later," Carl said, getting back on track. "But what you need to do now, Tom, is go through your client list and as quietly as possible, offload as many as you can. Joshua is your full-time job now."

I stared at the files and had a weird tingling in my head. On one hand, this was an agent's dream -- get rid of the truly annoying clients! Cut the dead weight! Unload the ballast! Every agent who was not running an agency had clients they'd rather be without -- and here I was being told to eject them. On the other hand, as an agent, you're only as good as your client list. Better bad clients than none at all. I was understanding intellectually that my new "client" was an opportunity that comes along -- well, that's never come along before, now that I thought of it. Emotionally, however, it still felt like I was taking the ascending 747 that was my agentorial career and aiming it into the Pacific, while all the pa.s.sengers, my clients, were screaming in the coach seats, their little emergency plastic airmasks waving in the turbulence.

Enough thinking, I decided. I grabbed the first file.