exchange notes. She talked about the egg-shaped spaceship and its robin’s egg blue color. He talked about the Red Man’s skin and his violet blood.
Their meetings were short at first. But they grew longer in time. And coffee turned into dinner and dancing.
Wyn and Aemilia talked about the things they had in common, like their favorite video games and books and their mutual hobby of collecting double dactyls and their love for triangle sandwiches.
They married under a gazebo at Aemilia’s mansion.
Wyn had come from poverty and scholarships.
Aemilia’s late uncle had willed his fortune to her, his favorite niece. Her uncle had been an oil tycoon. He had swum in the planet’s diminishing fossil fuels and greenbacks.
Now Aemilia was breaststroking in billions.
There came a time when the Government urged Wyn to cut open the Red Man and gut out his offal like a fish.
He spent hours trying to convince them that this was a bad idea and that it would be better to keep the Red Man alive for further study. He presented a good logical argument and he thought that he had won his case because in the end the Government decided to forestall the Red Man’s scientific evisceration.
Wyn laughed later when he realized that his logical arguments had had no bearing whatsoever on the Government’s decision. It turned out that Aemilia had kept the Red Man alive by making a sizeable donation to the campaign fund of the politician spearheading this project.
The project had been called: Operation Red Man .
Wyn subsequently dubbed it: “Project Monkeyshines.”
Bach’s music continued to blare through loud speakers while Wyn studied the Red Man’s physiology and Aemilia studied his spaceship.
The Red Man’s body was utterly hairless and totally muscular. His red skin was smooth with natural oils.
The music kept him perfectly motionless, except for his chest, which rose and fell with breath about once every thirty minutes, the way dolphins breathe.
His eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling, never shutting, never blinking, just staring.
Wyn had grown a little tired of Bach’s music. More than once he tried to turn it off. But changing the music was impossible: It would have been easier for him to add his beaming visage to the carved portraits on Mount Rushmore.
He was fascinated that music could make the Red Man powerless. Wyn called this phenomenon “auditory anesthetization.” He likened it to inhalational anesthetics – the way earth creatures can be rendered inert by the odor of certain vapors.
People go unconscious by inhaling chloroform, he explained in a report. Predator bugs can be knocked out by one whiff of the bombardier beetle’s projectile flatulence.
It seemed perfectly possible to him that creatures from other planets could go senseless by sound waves.
Aemilia adored Bach’s music. She compared the loveliness of its “multidimensional sounds” to the orderliness of the Golden Ratio.
She had been a great violinist, too. And she would play the violin to help her solve mysteries, the way Sherlock Holmes would do.
Playing her violin now gave her a new idea.
“We should study the Red Man and his spaceship together,” she said to Wyn.
It was a good idea. He wished he had thought of it first.
Cellar-6 did not have loud speakers for playing Bach’s music, and they needed to keep the Red Man inert, so they moved his spaceship from there to Cellar-7.
The Kharetie had programmed the spaceship to defend the Red Man against the harmful effects of combustibles, shock waves, and musical harmony.
So the spaceship detected Bach’s music and extended an iridescent energy shield that bamboozled not only everyone there, but also the electrical field of every piece of equipment.
Everything but the lights shut down.
The music playing through the loud speakers silenced.
The Red Man had been awake that whole time, but he had not understood the goings-on around him.
He had heard every word that Wyn
Their meetings were short at first. But they grew longer in time. And coffee turned into dinner and dancing.
Wyn and Aemilia talked about the things they had in common, like their favorite video games and books and their mutual hobby of collecting double dactyls and their love for triangle sandwiches.
They married under a gazebo at Aemilia’s mansion.
Wyn had come from poverty and scholarships.
Aemilia’s late uncle had willed his fortune to her, his favorite niece. Her uncle had been an oil tycoon. He had swum in the planet’s diminishing fossil fuels and greenbacks.
Now Aemilia was breaststroking in billions.
There came a time when the Government urged Wyn to cut open the Red Man and gut out his offal like a fish.
He spent hours trying to convince them that this was a bad idea and that it would be better to keep the Red Man alive for further study. He presented a good logical argument and he thought that he had won his case because in the end the Government decided to forestall the Red Man’s scientific evisceration.
Wyn laughed later when he realized that his logical arguments had had no bearing whatsoever on the Government’s decision. It turned out that Aemilia had kept the Red Man alive by making a sizeable donation to the campaign fund of the politician spearheading this project.
The project had been called: Operation Red Man .
Wyn subsequently dubbed it: “Project Monkeyshines.”
Bach’s music continued to blare through loud speakers while Wyn studied the Red Man’s physiology and Aemilia studied his spaceship.
The Red Man’s body was utterly hairless and totally muscular. His red skin was smooth with natural oils.
The music kept him perfectly motionless, except for his chest, which rose and fell with breath about once every thirty minutes, the way dolphins breathe.
His eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling, never shutting, never blinking, just staring.
Wyn had grown a little tired of Bach’s music. More than once he tried to turn it off. But changing the music was impossible: It would have been easier for him to add his beaming visage to the carved portraits on Mount Rushmore.
He was fascinated that music could make the Red Man powerless. Wyn called this phenomenon “auditory anesthetization.” He likened it to inhalational anesthetics – the way earth creatures can be rendered inert by the odor of certain vapors.
People go unconscious by inhaling chloroform, he explained in a report. Predator bugs can be knocked out by one whiff of the bombardier beetle’s projectile flatulence.
It seemed perfectly possible to him that creatures from other planets could go senseless by sound waves.
Aemilia adored Bach’s music. She compared the loveliness of its “multidimensional sounds” to the orderliness of the Golden Ratio.
She had been a great violinist, too. And she would play the violin to help her solve mysteries, the way Sherlock Holmes would do.
Playing her violin now gave her a new idea.
“We should study the Red Man and his spaceship together,” she said to Wyn.
It was a good idea. He wished he had thought of it first.
Cellar-6 did not have loud speakers for playing Bach’s music, and they needed to keep the Red Man inert, so they moved his spaceship from there to Cellar-7.
The Kharetie had programmed the spaceship to defend the Red Man against the harmful effects of combustibles, shock waves, and musical harmony.
So the spaceship detected Bach’s music and extended an iridescent energy shield that bamboozled not only everyone there, but also the electrical field of every piece of equipment.
Everything but the lights shut down.
The music playing through the loud speakers silenced.
The Red Man had been awake that whole time, but he had not understood the goings-on around him.
He had heard every word that Wyn
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