Part 19 (1/2)

”I feel great!” said the nearest man. ”I could eat a horse!”

The other men all made faces.

”Well, a small forest, anyway,” he amended.

”Permission granted,” said the leader. The men began walking rapidly back to the s.h.i.+p. ”And bring me a couple of heads of lettuce, and maybe an apple or two,” he called after them.

”You can join them if you wish,” said the elephants, who were coming to the conclusion that eating a horse wasn't half as disgusting a notion as they had thought it would be.

”No, my job is to make contact with aliens,” explained the leader. ”Although when you get right down to it, you're not as alien as we'd expected.”

”You're every bit as human as we expected,” replied the elephants.”I'll take that as a great compliment,” said the leader. ”But then, I would expect nothing less from traditional friends such as yourselves.”

”Traditional friends?” repeated the elephants, who had thought nothing a man said could still surprise them.

”Certainly. Even after you stopped being our partners in war, we've always had a special relations.h.i.+p with you.”

”You have?”

”Sure. Look how P. T. Barnum made an international superstar out of the original Jumbo. That animal lived like a king-or at least he did until he was accidentally run over by a locomotive.”

”We don't want to appear cynical,” said the elephants, ”but how do youaccidentally run over a seven-ton animal?”

”You do it,” said the leader, his face glowing with pride, ”by inventing the locomotive in the first place.

Whatever else we may be, you must admit we're a race that can boast of magnificent accomplishments: the internal combustion engine, splitting the atom, reaching the planets, curing cancer.” He paused. ”I don't mean to denigrate you, but truly, what have you got to equal that?”

”We live our lives free of sin,” responded the elephants simply. ”We respect each other's beliefs, we don't harm our environment, and we have never made war on other elephants.”

”And you'd put that up against the heart transplant, the silicon chip, and the three-dimensional television screen?” asked the leader with just a touch of condescension.

”Our aspirations are different from yours,” said the elephants. ”But we are as proud of our heroes as you are of yours.”

”You have heroes?” said the leader, unable to hide his surprise.

”Certainly.” The elephants rattled off their roll of honor: ”The Kilimanjaro Elephant. Selemundi.

Mohammed of Marsabit. And the Magnificent Seven of Krueger Park: Mafunyane, s.h.i.+ngwedzi, Kambaki, Joao, Dzombo, Ndlulamithi, and Phelwane.”

”Are they here on Neptune?” asked the leader as his men began returning from the s.h.i.+p.

”No,” said the elephants. ”You killed them all.”

”We must have had a reason,” insisted the men.

”They were there,” said the elephants. ”And they carried magnificent ivory.”

”See?” said the men. ”Weknew we had a reason.”

The elephants didn't like that answer much, but they were too polite to say so, and the two species exchanged views and white lies all through the brief Neptunian night. When the sun rose again, the men voiced their surprise.

”Look at you!” they said. ”What's happening?”

”We got tired of walking on all fours,” said the elephants. ”We decided it's more comfortable to stand upright.””And where are your trunks?” demanded the men.

”They got in the way.”

”Well, if that isn't the d.a.m.nedest thing!” said the men. Then they looked at each other. ”On second thought,this is the d.a.m.nedest thing! We're bursting out of our helmets!”

”And our ears are flapping,” said the leader.

”And our noses are getting longer,” said another man.

”This is most disconcerting,” said the leader. He paused. ”On the other hand, I don't feel nearly as much animosity toward you as I did yesterday. I wonder why?”

”Beats us,” said the elephants, who were becoming annoyed with the whining quality of his voice.

”It's true, though,” continued the leader. ”Today I feel like every elephant in the universe is my friend.”

”Too bad you didn't feel that way when it would have made a difference,” said the elephants irritably.

”Did you know you killed sixteen million of us in the twentieth century alone?”

”But we made amends,” noted the men. ”We set up game parks to preserve you.”

”True,” acknowledged the elephants. ”But in the process you took away most of our habitat. Then you decided to cull us so we wouldn't exhaust the park's food supply.” They paused dramatically. ”That was when Earth received its second alien visitation. The aliens examined the theory of preserving by culling, decided that Earth was an insane asylum, and made arrangements to drop all their incurables off in the future.”

Tears rolled down the men's bulky cheeks. ”We feel just terrible about that,” they wept. A few of them dabbed at their eyes with short, stubby fingers that seemed to be growing together.

”Maybe we should go back to the s.h.i.+p and consider all this,” said the men's leader, looking around futilely for something large enough in which to blow his nose. ”Besides, I have to use the facilities.”

”Sounds good to me,” said one of the men. ”I got dibs on the cabbage.”

”Guys?” said another. ”I know it sounds silly, but it's much more comfortable to walk on all fours.”

The elephants waited until the men were all on the s.h.i.+p, and then went about their business, which struck them as odd, because before the men came they didn'thave any business.

”You know,” said one of the elephants. ”I've got a sudden taste for a hamburger.”

”I want a beer,” said a second. Then: ”I wonder if there's a football game on the subs.p.a.ce radio.”

”It's really curious,” remarked a third. ”I have this urge to cheat on my wife-and I'm not even married.”

Vaguely disturbed without knowing why, they soon fell into a restless, dreamless sleep.