Heifetz

When Julian approached the creature, it moaned softly and then ate a butterfly.

"Are you feeling quite all right?" Julian asked.

The forest was softer than usual, an April shower having compressed the decaying leaves until they really wanted to decay, and not simply crunch underfoot. Soft sunlight fell through the leaves and landed heavily on the logs that haphazardly lay across every trail that looked even faintly promising. It was wet. Julian hoped that there were no bugs on the ground, because he wanted to hunker down and examine his friend Heifetz.

Heifetz burped. The butterfly's antennae had stuck to his gaping mouth and looked rather unmannerly. "I'm fine," he said. "But I think I wet myself."

"I doubt it," Julian said. "That was probably the rain. I don't think your bowels could possibly contain enough to wet the whole forest."

"You'd be surprised."

Heifetz was big, but not that big. Or so Julian hoped. After all, Heifetz was already green, had bulgy black eyes, a prehensile tongue, and was blind. A bladder big enough to drench Manhattan (or in this case a large portion of Massachusetts) would just be a little hard to take.

Julian had met Heifetz when he was escaping from a dreary class at UMass. Much as Julian loved the campus, loved the town of Amherst, loved the girls from Holyoke and Smith, and enjoyed the small pizza place down the road from the church, he couldn't handle his Contemporary Poetry class. Therefore, periodically, Julian went on long road trips to places as diverse and dull as Greenfield, Deerfield, and Hatfield. After discovering that all these towns were fundamentally similar, he gave up on civilization and ventured into the woods. And found a nine-foot tall, five-hundred pound alien who claimed to come from Mars.

"You cannot possibly come from Mars," Julian had said. "There is no life on Mars, except perhaps for lichen-like plant growths within rocks on the equatorial belt. That was proven by the probes and several Antartican expeditions."

"Pifflecock!" said Heifetz. "If you want to know about Mars, you don't go to Antartica. I just came from Mars, and I'm telling you, there's life there. My sister Ophelia, at least, is still there, as far as I know. Now then, sentient life I don't guarantee, but life as such, yes. After all, I live there."

"The relative atmospheres of Mars and Earth are hardly equivalent, however. Properly speaking, you should be prisoned by the gravitational field here, considering your mass; you should have respiratory problems; the change in solar proximity should create problems with vision; and there should be a language barrier. You must be a fraud, Mister... Mister...?"

"Heifetz," said Heifetz.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Heifetz. I am Julian Numen."

"Nice to meet you. But I just want to say that you've got it all wrong. Where there's a will, there's a way. A properly designed hydraulic muscle system, like that of your insect species and my humble self, would allow me to get up and walk around." Heifetz had proceeded to demonstrate, accidentally toppling a few sapling oaks. "A lack of a respiratory system does away with that problem, and I'm a fan of Golden Age science fiction, which explains the English. As for the vision, you're absolutely right. Wish I'd thought of that myself before I came down. Went and burned my eyes out, I'm afraid. Do you happen to have a seeing-eye dog handy?"

Since that fateful day, when Julian had learned not to believe anything he was taught in college, he and Heifetz had enjoyed many wonderful afternoon talks together. But today something was wrong. Heifetz no longer looked like he could lift a battleship. The normally glowing purple stripes along his sides were dim. And the little fronds on his knees were drooping.

Micturition was not an accurate diagnosis, Julian felt. He dropped to the ground and lay across Heifetz' enormous belly, feeling the salty warmth rise from the pores of the green skin. "Remember when we met?" he asked lazily.

"Sure." Heifetz reached over languorously and plucked a lizard off a tree.

"I didn't believe you at first, you know. I didn't believe you even after you ate my backpack."

"I know," Heifetz said. He swallowed the lizard and licked his lips, finally disposing of the antennae. "You kept spouting all your stupid science at me and trying to prove I didn't exist."

"Not exactly. I was trying to prove that you weren't what you said you were."

"And if I wasn't what I was, then what was I?" Heifetz said equably.

Julian could not think of an answer to that, so he changed the subject. "I've changed a lot since then, haven't I."

Heifetz laughed, a great big belly laugh that gave Julian an instant sensation of being belly up on a trampoline. "I'll say! You use contractions, for one thing! And you use words like shit and fuck once in a while, and you even slept with a girl before your junior year was over."

"Gee, thanks," Julian said mildly.

"Just kidding," Heifetz said, relenting. "But you have changed a lot. You used to be a bit of a nerd, and your idea of normal conversation was more work than a philosophy textbook."

"I wonder why I was like that?" Julian mused. They were getting off track, but that was normal with Heifetz. The alien had an irritating habit of not realizing what Julian wanted to talk about without Julian having to tell him, so conversations often wandered far afield.

"If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that you had a dull childhood. You read too many books when you were growing up."

"Yeah. I guess you're right."

When Julian was growing up in Florida, he never thought that he would ever go to college in Massachusetts. As far as he was concerned, Massachusetts was some cold state with a lot of historical-type places he had to learn in high school, and a ridiculous name he had to spell in grammar school. When he was a senior in high school, some mistake in the computers at the University of Massachusetts had given him a full scholarship, and so he went.

As a child, Julian never went outside for long if he could help it. He used to sit in his room and write tiny little poems that rhymed with "sad". When his mother got him piano lessons for his birthday, he snuck downstairs and cut all the strings with his penknife. The idea of actually emoting in public was hard to bear. He didn't stop to think that most people did it all the time. As he was proud of writing (in his room, in his journal, privately), Julian Numen was not most people.

The rest of the world discovered that when Julian began to do things in high school. When he hit his senior year, he decided he was tired of not being famous. So he began to do things. He would be funny. Funny was not emoting. He would star in school drama productions. Drama was not really his emotions. He would publish too many strange poems and win too many contests that tried to make high school students seem like literary phenomenons. When he graduated by the skin of his teeth, no-one could understand why his GPA was lower than his number of steady girlfriends. They thought that anyone that popular and talented had to have straight A's and have at least one woman who understood him thoroughly and guarded him fiercely.

And so Julian went to college, where it was cold and nobody knew him.

Heifetz tried to roll over. Julian heard all sorts of strange glooshy noises from inside his friend's belly and sat up, realizing that the hydraulic muscular system that made Heifetz something beyond an immovable object but not quite an unstoppable force was going into operation. But before Heifetz made it all the way around and onto his stomach, a grinding noise came from within him and he stopped moving.

"Gloomp," he said.

"What?" Julian said in astonishment. "Did I hear a nasty word?"

Heifetz finished rolling over with a lot of noise, and a sheepish grin on his mandibles. "I'm sorry, Julian. But since you don't have the slightest idea what it meant, I don't think it matters."

Julian came to sudden decision. "Let's go for a walk," he said.

Heifetz began to stare with an odd intensity at the leaves on the ground in front of him.

"Heifetz? Want to come along?"

"I don't think I should go for a walk right now."

"Why not? Our walks are always interesting! Remember the one when we went to the reservoir?"

Heifetz didn't answer. Instead, he said, "Julian, I want you to know you've been a very good friend. I realize this is the greatest cliche in history, and that what I am about to do could not be more sentimental if I were a dog named Old Yeller. But I just can't get up to go for a walk now. I think I'm about to croak. If you have any problems with watching this, I think you should leave. Please report my last words as 'I don't think I should go for a walk right now.' It sounds nicely ironic. Bye."

Julian swore. "You can't die!" In a paroxysm of despair he wandered near some moss-covered trunks and began to kick them brutally, hoping to bring them down. After doing this ineffectually for a short while, he stopped and faced Heifetz' quizzical blind eye. Squatting down in front of the monstrous head, he asked, "How do you know you are going to die?"

"Well, I feel like shit..."

"On Earth that is not usually regarded as a death sentence, Heifetz."

"...and I find that my internal organs are undergoing some sort of inflammation that indicates to me the imminence of the incarnation of my offspring."

"Offspring?"

"Yeah."

"Offspring?"

"Yes. And if you say that one more time, I will have to hurt you."

"But Heifetz! You're going to have kids? I thought you were male! I thought kids were a good thing! I thought..."

"You think too much, Julian," Heifetz said tiredly. "Yes, I am male, yes, kids are nice, yes, I am going to die. I'm afraid my species does not stand childbirth very well. You see, since I am hydraulic in nature, and children form within me, they must appropriate my liquid to exist. Then they must exit me to obtain an independent life. Since I seem to lack an appropriate hole, they have to rupture me. Then I leak to death."

Julian dropped despondently next to Heifetz. "Can you get an abortion?"

"Somehow, Julian, I doubt that human doctors would operate on me."

"You're right," Julian said. He leaned back and began to ponder the implications of birth. He suddenly struck upon a bright idea. "Heifetz!" he said eagerly. "This is like that book, Charlotte's Web! You'll die and leave your offspring, leaving me with a bunch of little aliens to teach all about life and so on! Sure, you'll be dead, but you will have made a difference in your life..." Julian was immensely pleased with himself, and got up to pace the clearing wildly while he considered the possibilities. Heifetz followed him with one amused eyestalk. Finally the large alien spoke.

"I don't think it will work that way," he said. "You see, my kids are probably going to be glad to see you, but for another reason."

"Oh? What's that?" Julian said, visions of an animated feature film running through his head.

"Well, they are going to be just like me, hydraulic. They're going to want to grow to their full size. For that they need moisture. The human body is what, seventy percent water?"

Julian stared back at Heifetz in horror. "You mean they're going to want to drink me?"

"Well, they wouldn't know any better. I mean, they'd just be babies," Heifetz said mildly.

Julian slumped to the ground and landed on a patch of wet moss. After a while of quiet interrupted only by increasingly ominous grinding noises from inside Heifetz, he raised his head. "How many kids are you going to have, Heifetz?" Julian's voice was even and measured.

"Oh, I don't know," said Heifetz breezily. "Two hundred or so."

"All as big as you?"

"Well, not at first, but eventually maybe even bigger. After all, Earth's atmosphere is far more humid than Mars'- they could really pig out and get huge."

Julian suddenly understood why Mars was a dead planet. Heifetzes had drunk it.

Julian had met his girlfriend during a party to welcome all the naive freshmen. She was sitting by the bar in the Student Center, looking obviously bored. On that magic night when he had first seen her, she had regarded him with no more interest than a slug. It was not until far after meeting Heifetz that he dared approach her and convince her that he was nice enough to go out with. Now they were engaged, she had changed virtually every facet of his personality, and he was hopelessly in love. Of course, she had made him cut his hair, but he had secretly believed it looked awful anyway, and that he was a conservative at heart.

Julian lived in fear of the day when Emily would start the following conversation:

"Why do you always go out into the woods and never take me?"

"Well, Emily, I think we are now close enough that I can tell you. I visit a large blind alien from Mars with a Jewish name. He taught me how to fall in love and how to get you and how to speak in contractions."

"Julian, I thought we had a deal!"

"Huh? What was it?"

"I wouldn't wear hairspray and you wouldn't go insane! You know? Never mind. We're breaking up. I can't be seen in public with a man who believes the National Enquirer."

Whereupon Julian would begin to hit his head very hard against a concrete wall.

So Emily had never heard about Heifetz. Which was just as well, Heifetz said. Girls could be hard to deal with. Heifetz himself avoided all dealings with them just because he couldn't understand the way they thought. "I'd rather talk with a fern," was his favorite quote on the subject. Of course, Julian couldn't appreciate the quality of a fern fully, because they never talked to him; but Heifetz said they were quite able to carry on interesting conversations.

When Julian finally realized that Heifetz was going to destroy the Earth, he thought about Emily. There was no way he could save her. Mini-Heifetzes would catch her and demoisturize her until she was nothing more than a little pile of dust. In fact, he realized with even greater horror, they'd do the same to him.

"Heifetz," he said with determination, "we have to prevent this birth."

They tried, they honestly did. But the day came when Julian was staring helplessly at Heifetz, who no longer resembled a large green ball so much as a large green bag full of smaller balls. His skin was dry and his eyes desiccated. "I think I am about to burst," Heifetz said. "You should leave. I figure that only the surrounding hundred miles or so will be immediately devastated in the next few days. You can get away with Emily, go live in the desert somewhere and be safe until the atmosphere runs out."

"Good idea." Julian said. He didn't move. He figured that he should watch the babies born, at least. He harbored some suicidal ideas of being the first to die in the scourge that destroyed the Earth, but he knew that nobody would ever know if he had, so the ideas weren't exactly in the forefront of his mind. Also, he wasn't sure he would ever be able to explain it to Emily if he did die because of some aliens from outer space that were going to steal all the Earth's water. Of course, Emily herself would only be a little pile of dust, so he wasn't worrying about it.

"Goukik," Heifetz said, grimacing.

"What does that mean?" Julian asked.

"As near as it can be approximated in English, it means 'tonk.' Why?"

"Tonk? I don't know that word... Are sure it's an accurate translation?"

"No."

They resumed contemplation of Heifetz' belly. Little swells were beginning to noticeably crack the skin, and liquid was seeping outward. It looked a lot like water.

Julian asked Heifetz why the kids didn't drink each other at birth. Heifetz didn't know. They kept staring at the rivulet wandering over the green.

Heifetz asked Julian where Emily was. Julian said he thought she was at the dorms. They watched the first little head poke out. The flood of fluids was increasing, splashing all over the ground and wetting down the crisp leaves.

"Julian," Heifetz said with some urgency, "you really should leave now. I am worried that the little twerps will drink you if you stick around. Why don't you go marry Emily and have a lot of kids...?"

"Just like you?"

"Well, not exactly," Heifetz said. "But sort of."

"Maybe we could go ruin Mars," Julian said bitterly.

Suddenly Heifetz expired. The little babies burst forth like an avenging army and were immediately struck blind by the bright Sun. They milled around and began to bump into each other. Finding fluid, they attacked and devoured their brothers and sisters.

"Wow," Julian said. He figured he could get a poem out of this if he wanted to resurrect his fame. Heifetz was pretty much gone now, little pieces of flesh being mauled by his babies who were rapidly growing in size. All that knowledge of the pulp SF market of the 1940's, all those neat contractions, vanishing into dust while Julian watched. It was sort of depressing, but he still thought it looked less real than the last horror movie he had seen in Amherst.

A baby began to advance towards him. Regretfully, Julian pulled out the battery-powered curling iron he had borrowed from Emily, and with a banzai yell, fried it. It squeaked a bit, and then died. Julian proceeded to methodically skewer the remaining babies- most of them had already been killed by each other- and finally, left the clearing empty except for a huge greenish skeleton that lay against the tree. It seemed to be saying, "I don't think I can go for a walk right now."

Julian sat there and thought about mortality, love, saving the planet, and Emily. He felt like shit. Eventually he got up and walked away, forgetting the curling iron. Heifetz' cadaver lay there like a testimonial to the inviolability of the forests and the lakes, but Julian was thinking about life in the desert.

Maybe out there nobody would care who he was.