Pleas to the Pleiades

“Problem is, we’ve still got our unexpected company. Six, seven, eight o’clock, high and low. They’re following us in.”

“I wondered what was keeping them. Captain, hailing frequencies are open. We’ve hacked into NORAD. General Wood will answer.”

In NORAD, General Wood answered. “Wood.”

Jimmie felt proud but uncertain. After all, General Wood had known him … and his Dad. “General Wood, this is your old neighbor from when I was in high school. Jimmie Memnon. You remember my father and me?”

General Wood answered, “Yes, I do. Hold on a minute.” He muted his phone, and told his assistants, “Trace this call.”

“General, we know you are trying to trace this call. We’re coming in from the cold.” Jimmie hung up the phone.

Then he said to Candor, “So what do we do now?”

“Fly in, sky pilot. Head for your home.”

The spacecraft entered in a whirling pattern into the North Pole skies. The dozen discs followed them in, amidst the blazing Northern Lights.

In the NORAD command, General Wood commanded, “Request the Dracos to fire at will upon enemy spacecraft.”

General Wood’s staff set their programs.

Nevertheless, our spacecraft slipped in, and their pursuers were destroyed in a maelstrom of Northern Lights.

A staff officer addressed General Wood, “General, our so-called Draco friends have been destroyed. But it may not have gone according to your plan. The destroyed vessels were of Class One QA.” It was clear that he did not really like dealing with the Dracos.

“Durnburn! What happened?”

“Your old friend, sir, seems to have eluded us.”

There were exultant sidelong looks among the staff.

Above the Okefenokee Florida swamps, near the northern Withlacoochee River, the spacecraft approached and landed near an old dignified colonial house near the town of Jasper, on the edge of the fragrant magnolia trees. Its electrostatic lifters gently allowed it to settle onto the grass, near a small vegetable garden of collard greens, squash, tomatoes, and okra.

Jimmie, Khlilia, and Candor came out of their craft.

“Good air here,” they all agreed.

Meanwhile, General Wood barked, “Get me some copies of Pushkin and Gogol.”

“What, sir?”

“You heard me, you infernal colonel next in line after me. Get me some translations of those old Russian storytellers Pushkin and Gogol. Memnon fantasizes himself as one of their protagonists. He’s already landed, but where did he land? California, Colorado, or Florida? I’m betting Florida, but maybe Mexico or the Caribbean.”

Jimmie, Khlilia, and Candor came out of their spacecraft and entered the front screened porch of the old dignified colonial house on the edge of the swamps. There, waiting for them, was Jimmie’s blind great-grandmother Osie.

His blind great-grandmother Osie said, “Oh, it’s you, Jimmie!” They kissed cheeks and hugged. She knew him without sight.

Jimmie said, “Khlilia, Candor, this is me great grand-mum, Osie. Osie, these are my friends Khlilia and Candor.”

Osie said, “Oh, what strange and wonderful friends you seem to find. You have a girlfriend, she is a musician. And your other friend smells like a well-groomed alligator or iguana. I knew you would come soon.”

Candor laughed, in his reptilian way. “You are blind, but you have improved your sense of smell.”

Osie replied, as she served iced tea, and then food, and all ate, “And I have a tasty barbecue ready for you, after this potato salad and shrimp cocktail.”

Jimmie, while eating, replied, “Osie, take these metals and sell them, as you know how to do. Put the money in our account.”

At Osie’s, Jimmie’s former bandmates arrived in their nice cars, and set up their amps and drums for Candor to play. They looked askance at Candor and at the spacecraft, but, being rock musicians, they had long ago become quite used to strange people with strange cars and airplanes.

“This is my Grandma Osie, this is Khlilia, and this here is the Prince of Candor.” Everybody got acquainted. They all went straight into playing as if nothing was unusual, while Osie prepared a big pot of crawdad gumbo. Her blindness did not interfere with her cutting up the tender okra pods, the onions, garlic, tomatoes, and celery.

After a few country-style songs, followed by a wild rendition of ‘Hotel Chic’, Osie said, “When you do it country style, I like it. Especially when you do that chicken-pickin’ guitar.”

The old musician buddies looked at Jimmie’s spacecraft. “So that’s how you got here so fast? Nice ship. Build one for me, man.”

“We’ll see what we can do about that, if Candor here agrees. Yeah, I got a new flow. Alpha-mercury fission drive. Only a few days to Mars now, but the Earth governments are not too happy about it. They say it’s illegal to go so fast.”

“Speaking of fast, ever get your microphone and Lakota wedding belt back from that flute player who also stole Woe’s Maserati?”

Jimmie replied, “Ha, I had forgotten about that one. No, never got them back. That guy was a good player, but not honest.”

“Lots of musicians are like that,. Well, don’t invite him to any sessions anymore.”

Candor was comfortable with legendary musicians, but Khlilia remained in awe of having played with the former Beagles. “So, you guys are talking about the guy who played flute on your song ‘The Skies of Zipolite’? I really liked that song. The flute swirled around in multiple digital delay patterns, and your synthesizer and electronic drums were cosmic.”

“Yeah. Only two guys on the whole thing. Got lots of radio airplay in Boulder and Gainesville in 1985. Steg Grivenson got it on the radio because he bragged about having played with Woe Jalsh. He played electric clarinet on another tune of mine, ‘Shades of Red’.”

“You’ve had three CDs, Jimmie, and your music does get a bit weird, but you’ve got your own niche. You deserve greater musical success,” said Learny.

“Aw, shucks, I’m just a guy who thinks he’s a musician.”

Khlilia jumped to Jimmie’s defense. “C’mon, Candor would have eaten you if you weren’t a great musician.”

Fonz and Learny were a bit after-math shocked, but they kept their silence. They were used to weird people with weird habits and tastes, and every kind of after-math.

Osie brought out steaming bowls of tasty and even greatly gustatory crawdad gumbo, which she served with rice and red beans. Everybody was now eating quietly, and cracking open the lobster-like crawdads and sucking out the juice.

“Great gumbo, tasty crawdaddies,” said Fonz.

Candor said, “How could I have missed this delicious dish on all my previous visits to Earth?” He popped the crawdads into his mouth and ate them whole, shells and all, crunching loudly. Everybody else ate more carefully, wiping their mouths with the paper napkins that Osie supplied.

Jimmie said, “Osie is a unique chef. Hey, Fonz, Learny, come back to Mars with us. Binger Shaker is living there with us. The two best drummers in the solar system – Binger and Candor.”

“No thanks, but thanks for the invite,” they answered, almost in unison. “We get enough royalties here on Earth to be too comfortable.”

“Well then, let’s record for posterity. Great to see you guys again, and play together.”

Fonz asked, “Seriously, Jimmie, Binger Shaker is there on Mars with y’all? Maybe we’ll come there later.”

“Ha, or get Binger a visa to come to Florida. They kicked him out of California. He has a reputation for aggressiveness, but he’s always been a gentleman with me.”

“Well, yeah, I always thought so too. Must have been hard to get along with that firecracker Brack Juice.”

“Well put. Fonz, I hope that warm nice smells always rise up in the air near you.”

“Ha, sounds funny the way you say it. Up ahead in the distance … hope you don’t land in the wrong hotel.”

“Maybe we’ll all play together at the Mars Hotel with Wob Beard and Lil Flesh. Maybe invite Hark Mudgeon, Wan Dalters, Schick Ronson, Tyke Mommas, Mayan Brickman, Shawn Standholster, and my brother Rark Muff.”

“Who are those last guys?”

“Guys from Daytona and DeLand. My younger brother Rark Muff is well known there as a great drummer. It’s a joke name, he’s a Memnon and a Roffe, like me.”

“Well, musicianship runs in families,” said Learny. “I should know.”

Osie smiled at that. “These are my boys.”

Jimmie reminisced. “I was never a successful musician, but Grandma knows I tried. Oh, the pickin’ parties in old Chicksookhatchee! Mike Campbell, Don Felder, the Winters, the Leadons, the Barnetts, the Curtises, and we Roffes.”

Khlilia said, “Some of you guys really made it big. Fonz and Learny, you really made it big. Great to play with you.”

Jimmie said, “Osie here, she taught me Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, out here in the swamps, when I was but a tyke. Then I learned slide guitar on my uncle’s farm not far away from here, from a black guy who worked on the farm, pulling sweet potatoes out of the sandy earth of North Florida. He also taught me how to roll dice. Shake ’em a long time, breathe on ’em, then toss ’em.”

“A lesson in life,” said Candor. It’s very rare that I eat a black person. Not that they don’t taste equally good. They just have taste.”

Osie, Fonz, and Learny looked a little strange, but Jimmie and Khlilia had long become used to the Prince of Candor.

Jimmie grabbed his guitar, the maple-neck Carvin with the stereo outputs, and struck into one of his reggae rhythms. He made the chords bounce back and forth between two separate speaker systems. Then he paused and said, “Plenty of room in the cosmos. We can find new planets now, with the new alpha-mercury flow.”

They all started playing a reggae version of ‘Take it Easy’. Jimmie pulled out Osie’s old banjo as the song wound up toward the end, and he plucked it energetically.

When they finished, Fonz said, “Take it easy, Jimmie, old friend. I think you have a woman here who says she is a friend of yours.”

Khlilia blushed.

Then, ‘Outside Woman Blues’. Jimmie sang, “If you lose your woman, pray to God you don’t lose your mind,” as Fonz copied Cleric Apt One’s riffs. “And if you lose your woman, please don’t fool with mine.”

Learny remarked after they finished, “You don’t need to buy a bulldog when you’ve got the Prince of Candor on your side.”

Khlilia said, “Jimmie, I know you’ve been through the wringer with women.”

Fonz added, “The wringer? I knew his first wife. A real witchy woman.”

“Maybe,” Jimmie answered. “Khlilia, we’ve all been through incredible and sometimes terrible trips. They put my first wife’s elder brother through the Chatterquot Facility, and he never made it out. They drugged him up big-time. I don’t like drugs, legal or illegal. I like vitamins. I pity people who are on drugs. I don’t think they should be put in jail. They should go through mandatory treatment programs. Let’s create a new world, whether here on Earth, on Mars, or on other planets.”

“Recreate what we can,” said Fonz. “This could be heaven or this could be hell.”

“Right,” agreed Learny.

Jimmie was a little upset. “What can we do? Learny, I remember what Kick Rurtis told me he did when they nudged you out of the band. He said that Han Denley and Flynn Grey were in the men’s bathroom during a show. He went in with them, and said, ‘You guys chased Learny out of the Beagles because he didn’t want to buy an expensive car?’ Then he pissed on them.”

Learny replied, “Admirable sentiments, but still a crass act.”

“Rurtis was always a kick.”

“Money grubbers,” said Fonz.

Changing the subject, Jimmie said, “Khlilia, you’ve never been to this region before. How do you like it? It’s our home zone.”

“Well, it’s really hot, and there are mosquitoes, deerflies, and horseflies.”

Candor slithered out his tongue and ate mosquitoes and flies aplenty.

“And out there are alligators and snakes and snapping turtles. Guarantee, something will bite you, or your ding-dong. Out there are also dragonflies of several sizes and colours, they eat mosquitoes, that’s why we call them mosquito hawks. And alligators eat snakes and turtles. It’s all in balance,” said Learny.

Jimmie added, “Out there in the woods are panthers and bears. Raccoons, skunks, possums. Deer. Grandma Osie, you have any more food for us? Music is hungry work.”

“Well, Jimmie, all I have left is a little smoked mullet and boiled peanuts.”

“Bless your pea-pickin’ heart. Smoked mullet and boiled peanuts are food of the gods, food for the soul.”

“We still need more food,” Candor said, “And I will get it. You mammals need to eat so frequently.” He disappeared into the swampy Florida forest.

Minutes later, he reappeared, bearing a deer and a wild hog, and a large alligator, all three dead and bleeding, and several large fish. As usual, he sucked the eyeballs and brains out of the animals, and bit the heads off the fish. He quickly cut up steaks after skinning the two mammals. Then he cleaned the fish and the reptile. “Osie, let’s prepare more food and eat.”

Osie had a barbecue fire already going. Shortly thereafter, all were eating well. Corn on the cob and boiled new potatoes from Osie’s garden, then venison and wild pig barbecue, and fresh fish and gator tail.

“Osie, this barbecue sauce is as tasty as mine,” Candor said.

Fonz, Learny, and Khlilia waited for Jimmie’s answer.

“She has different secret recipes though. Y’all should share recipes.”

“I’m happy to,” answered Osie, blind but talkative as always. “Take some good red wine vinegar, or it could be from apple cider. Squeeze into it some fresh lemon juice. Soak in this, for at least a day – three is better – a few crushed bay leaves, a few crushed aromatic peppercorns, a spoonful of salt, several very finely cut cayenne peppers, several crushed garlic cloves, a couple cut-up red onions, a little turmeric powder, a few spoonfuls of tomato paste, and a few ground celery seeds. The meat will soak in it while you guys play a few more tunes.”

They played until tomorrow. Then they all slept.

Everybody slept while the meat soaked up the spices.

The next day, the middle of the day – for musicians sleep late – they all rose to the aromatic fragrance of Osie’s cooking.

“Jimmie, I’ve already made the fire. Khlilia got up early and helped me. It’s a fire of cherry wood, and plum, and oak.”

“That will be very tasty for our guests,” said Jimmie.

Everybody ate freshly barbecued venison and wild pig, and gator tail, better than yesterday.

Later, the farewells were fond, as fellow musicians make … as always, the music was just something that happened.

Jimmie, Khlilia, and Candor went back into their spacecraft from the old dignified colonial house on the edge of the swamps.

Candor burped, “Jimmie, what did we eat with that gentle lady and your famous musician friends?”

“Gator tail, my man. Let’s go quickly to our next destination. The Nine Bright Star Systems on the Leeward Edge of Our Limb of the Galaxy: One white – Alpheratz; three orange – Diphda or Deneb Kaitos, Baten Kaitos, and Hamal; four red – Mira, Mirach, Menkar, and Zaurak; and one blue/white star – Sharatan comprise this region.

“All the orange stars are variable; thus, Alpheratz, and a few other stars in this region, comprise the civilization of the Andromedans, alone in this rather uncrowded region.”

Khlilia wanted to show that she knew some astronomy. “A lot of orange and red, but there are other habitable star systems in this region. Someone could be called Andromedan because they came from a star system in this region, not necessarily from the distant galaxy. This region corresponds to Aries and Taurus in astrology. The Whale has precessed here.”

Jimmie said, “Good! Khlilia! Osha has even more of the running mythological commentary. Let’s pick him up. Let’s go out through the South Pole this time, but stop in Buenos Aires, and stock up on supplies using some of our gold.”

Candor said, “Jimmie, I know it’s against the law, but I’d like to stay here and guard your grandmother. Don’t worry, you know I won’t eat her. I think other food is coming.”

“Okay, I think you’re probably right.”

Their ship took off and immediately headed south.

General Wood and his staff were in their command center.

His chief of staff informed him, “General Wood, a craft resembling our earlier bogie is leaving North Florida in a southerly direction.”

Wood was adamant, and even vengeful. “Intercept and fire at will.”

The Air Force’s F-22s fired at our friends’ spaceship, but instead hit intercepting Argentine aircraft.

Wood despaired, “This is just not my day.”

“General, a call from the Pentagon,” the staff member said.

“I know what they will say.” He answered the phone. “Tactical Air Command, General Wood speaking.”

“General Wood, you are relieved of command. That’s two SNAFUS in one day, causing huge problems in our international and interplanetary relations.”

“Sir, I know who our bogie was.”

“Yes, we know you do. Report to Security Intercept Division, and you had better help them find your old friend Jimmie Memnon and his illegal technology. Report to SID.”

“Yes, sir,” General Wood answered dejectedly.

The Pentagon General said to his staff, “Send a commando team to their take-off area. GPS – Jasper, Florida. The Okefenokee Swamp.”

A commando team moved through the swamp, swatting mosquitoes. Candor waited for them. As the commandos, one by one, moved toward Jimmie’s grandmother’s house, Candor stealthily attacked and ate all of them.

The Prince of Candor then perfectly simulated the head commando’s voice, from what he had heard of the dying man’s objections. He spoke into the dead man’s mobile phone. “General, mission accomplished.”

Jimmie and Khlilia hovered again over the swamps near Jasper, using their new spacecraft’s electrostatic lift systems. Jimmie went out and down the lanyard ladder, kissed his dear grandmother Osie again, and he and Candor then went back up the rope ladder into their spacecraft. Jimmie, Candor, and Khlilia were in their spacecraft, headed back to Mars. It took a few days.

Candor fiddled with knobs. Osha’s image appeared in a whirlwind of sea-colored light.

Jimmie addressed him, “Osha, old friend, we’re picking you up and heading for Deneb Kaitos.” Aside to Candor, he said, “Nice picture, Prince.”