“Have a little faith, Gratuity,” Landry said, his smile fading. “I’ve met with them. I understand them better than possibly anyone on Earth. They are a little rough around the edges, yes, but—”
“But I know them, too. I know a lot of stuff about the Gorg that nobody else knows. A Boov in Florida told me things,” I said, and it was sort of true. “Like that they’re all clones of each other.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Oh. Well…their ship? It’s also covered in Gorg skin, if you can believe that.”
“I can believe it,” said Landry, “because I knew it already.”
I frowned. “You did?”
Landry walked around to the other side of his desk and sat down. He looked like he was telling the truth. He wasn’t surprised at all.
“There are people resisting the Gorg. People fighting with the Boov, and humans working together against all the aliens. Yes. And they’re good Americans and brave citizens. But the best thing for everyone right now is to play along. Be good and obedient to the Gorg. They’ll all leave soon anyway.”
“Really? They said so? When are they leaving?”
He was up and pacing again, looking everywhere but at me. From time to time he’d stop and touch something, a paperweight or little statue.
“Of course they didn’t say so,” he said. “You’re being naive. But I know so.”
“How?”
“Their whole plan, their whole operation…it won’t work. It’s untenable. It’s like a galactic Ponzi scheme.”
I didn’t understand a word he was saying. “A Fonzie scheme?”
“Ponzi. Ponzi scheme,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Named for…for…someone named Ponzi. It’s the same as a pyramid scheme.”
I will admit that I was picturing Egypt at this point.
“And so…” I said.
“Their whole society is based on paying and feeding old Gorg by making new Gorg and conquering worlds. They have to keep making more and more, sending them out in every direction. They’re stretched too thin. Sooner or later they’ll have too many Gorg and not enough resources, and the whole operation will implode.”
I frowned. “Implode?”
“It’s the opposite of explode.”
“Wouldn’t the opposite of exploding be a good thing?”
“The point is,” he said, “if we bide our time and do what they ask, then fewer people get hurt. Eventually the Gorg will leave, or at least have to pull back their operation. And that’s when we fight, if ever.”
I stood up.
“I’m just saying…what if there was a way to fight them now—”
“I have to get back to work,” said Landry. “You can let yourself out.”
I sighed and walked away from the desk in a daze.
“Hmm. Maybe you can’t,” Landry said. “That’s the broom closet. The door you came in is over there.”
I turned and sped from the office, mortified.
When I got back home I told J.Lo everything that had been said. Except the part about the broom closet. He didn’t like what he heard.
“This…this Ann Landers fellow—”
“Landry,” I said. “Dan Landry.”
“This Dan Landry has the whole thing wrong. The Gorg have not ‘stretched thin.’ They will not run out of the resources; they have telecloning. They cannot run out.”
“Yeah…” I said, “but then why do they invade other planets? Why do they spend so much time taking other people’s stuff away if they can just make their own?”
“Fff. Because they are jerks!” said J.Lo, throwing his arms in the air. “They are poomps! Kacknackers!”
He called them all kinds of other Boovish words I’d have to bleep if I translated.
“I agree,” I said. “I totally agree. I’m just suggesting that maybe we don’t know everything about them after all. You said they can’t get sick, but I’ve seen two of them sneeze. Or the same one sneeze twice.”
“It could not have been a sneeze.”
“Their noses were running. Something was making them sick. Are you saying Gorg just make stuff come out of their noses for fun?”
“Yes!” said J.Lo, pacing. “For fun! Why not? Who wouldn’t want something coming out from his nose?”
He was as bad as I was—he’d say anything when he got this upset. I cleaned my fingernails and waited for him to calm down. He finally stopped and stared at the wall. He took a breath.
“Maybe…maybe it was a comfort…a comfort to think of the Gorg as unstoppable. It is not so bad to be beaten when you are believing the enemy is an army of perfect monsters.”
“I dunno,” I said. “I think maybe something has changed. You guys would have noticed these symptoms before. This last Gorg looked like he cried motor oil.”
J.Lo started pacing again. Somewhere in the casino, music was playing.
“You know,” I said, “back when Slushious’s tape deck actually played tapes, Mom and I would copy our music so we could listen to it in the car.”
J.Lo said nothing, but he stopped pacing.
“The copies we made never sounded as good as the original. And if we had to copy a copy? It got even worse. So, what if the Gorg never perfected complex cloning? What if they’ve been making clones of clones of clones, and getting weaker every time?”
Mom came home just then.
“Hi, Turtlebear, J.Lo.”
“Mom,” I said, “you met with some Gorg, right? Before J.Lo and I got here?”
“Yeah, a few.”
“Did any of them sneeze?”
“Sneeze? Not that I noticed.”
“You would have noticed,” I said.
“Then no.”
“Did they wipe their noses, or get teary eyes or anything?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was right next to them the whole time.”
“That Landry guy said the Gorg were going to have a big surprise for us.”
“You talked to Daniel?”
“Yeah. He said there would be this surprise at the, uh…festival. I forget what it’s called.”
“The Nothing to Worry About Festival,” said Mom. “Isn’t that nice? No worries…”
“This surprise is gonna be bad news, Mom. I swear. Just ask J.Lo.”