"He had this kid," Studs continued, "he and his wife, and they're rich like I said and he had this great practice, in psychiatry maybe, but anyway, he had this kid only six years old and the poor little girl gets granulocytic leukemia--know what that is? Doesn't matter."

"Granulo..." Quirk muttered aloud to himself, writing furiously in longhand. "You know how to spell it?" 

"Fuck, no. Look it up. Anyway, the kid suffers terribly with the treatments, the chemo they have to give her, until she can't stand it no more and she refuses to take any more of the chemo because it makes her throw up all day and night, for like weeks. And the kid's losing all this weight, too,  'cause she can't keep anything down, and the Doc's wife's crying her eyes out alla time, hysterical, you know?     

"Then they hear that marijuana will make the nausea go away and even give the kid an appetite again, 'the hungries', despite the chemo treatments. So they try it and surprise. It's true. But the Doc, he can't say nothing about this because he could lose his goddamn license. He could lose his home, everything. Yet he's dying to tell folks about this, to write a paper about this miraculous discovery. In fact, he was studying psychoactive drugs and was the author of a bunch of these phony straight books and articles 'bout how bad addictive drugs and pot are for ya--toeing the government's bullshit line. And the Feds are watching him all the time anyway, suspicious of him for even writing anything, even bad things, about addictive drugs. Paranoid Nazis. They figure, if you gonna investigate pussy, you're gonna  end up playing with pussy too, you see. Like it's inevitable, know what I mean? Paranoid sonsufbitch bastards."

"Yeah, yeah...pussy...inevitable," said Quirk as he lit a fresh cigarette with the remains of his old one, then stubbed it out.

"Well, the daughter dies...So the Doc freaks out and gets really pissed off after that too, loses it kind of for a while, and starts writing really recklessly, all about how pot may not be so bad after all...Then before you know it, The Narcs just happen to find some goddamn pot seeds in his bushes the wind coulda blown in and before you know it, he's under arrest for possession and distribution! And he flees to the Bahamas!"

"If you'd had a gun he'd have stolen that too," Tresko said.

"No, no," Kitty said. "He wouldn't've. You see we saw him coming. It wasn't like he surprised  us or anything.  He was coming toward us and slowly getting his gun out and smiling at us maliciously the whole time, knowing we were just utterly defenseless--this being frigging New York City, after all, where no law abiding citizen is allowed to be armed.  Only all the criminals. If I had had a weapon too, I woulda had time to get my own gun out, switch off the safety and give that sonofabitch a big surprise. Shoot him right in the balls if I could. But he knew he had us. He knew he was armed and we, trusting, honorable, idiotic law-abiding citizens, weren't gonna be."
   
"What a horrible experience," Tresko said.
    
"Yes, it was. Ever since that time, I've been very pro-gun. I'm an NRA member, even, now.  But you can't get a gun in New York. Not legally. And illegally means buying it in some dangerous neighborhood where you need a gun to buy the goddamn gun!"

Kitty blushed at her language, then laughed, and Tresko smiled.
    
"Well I can probably do something about that. But the easiest way is if you come to Paradise. You can buy anything you want there, and duty free, too."
    
"Don't be surprised, I might take you up on that offer."

As he quietly walked down the hall, Krebs could see that the door to the room at the end was ajar. When he reached it, he saw the ‘7’ on the door. Krebs remained in the doorway. There was a little maid’s wagon with linen and towels inside. He looked to the far end of the room. Hannah was bent over, tucking the sheets in, preparing the bed. He watched her, a strong, hardworking girl with light-brown hair in long thick braids hanging down in front of her as she worked—he could not see her braids well from where he stood, but he could picture them. He watched her large, full behind, covered by the long Prussian blue skirt. He watched the apron strings and skirt shake with her brisk movements.

Quietly Krebs removed the key from the outer keyhole and shut the door. Then he locked it.

Perhaps out of curiosity--or more likely due to sheer boredom--Maria-Rita reached out her arm and picked up the strange globe from under the coffee table. "What's this?" she asked me in English. 

"I don't know. I thought it was Oscar's." Oscar is her son.

"I've never seen it before. It's kind of heavy--and it's humming!" she said, holding the sphere up near her ear.  

"Jesus!" I swore, suddenly realizing the danger, and jumping to my feet. "Dont move, Maria-Rita!" I ran for the rubbing alcohol. If this weird thing wasn't Oscar's, then Jean and Jose must have brought it with them--from an alien flying saucer!

I liberally swabbed Maria-Rita's hands, arms and the globe with alcohol, for who knew what it could do, or what it was? The damn thing might have been radioactive, for all I knew. I was negligent in leaving it lying there, but that is where Jean and Jose had left it. I had been too preoccupied to stop and really consider this strange clockwork soccerball of theirs.

"What is this?" Maria-Rita said. "A toy? Some kind of alien plaything?"

I could barely discern its details there in the semi-darkness. Of course before I could stop her, she had picked up the globe again and was rattling it.

"Give me that!" I reached lengthwise to take it from her. Maria-Rita of course leaned increasingly backwards and away from me, forcing me off balance and almost on top of her. In fact, I was on top of her for a couple of seconds, without meaning to be.

"Oh Doctor! I didn't know you felt so passionately about me!" she teased, twining her arms about my waist. I struggled to get up again with difficulty.

"You silly girl! Be careful! We don't know what it is! It could be a bomb for all we know!"         

"Sure. A bomb on your coffee table," she sneered, chuckling. Then quite abruptly she stopped laughing, which instinctively  made me stop.

"What happened?!" I demanded anxiously.

"Look at that! It opens!"

"What?!"

"This stupid bomb of yours!"

Total silence. Apparently no one was conscious anymore. Or possibly they were all dead now.  Then the TV transmission abruptly ended.

"Wow!" said Everett.

"I'm going back to Mexico, where there are no aliens!"
Maria-Rita wailed.

"You wish!" said Everett.

"Well, what do you think?" I asked.

"Let's hear the tape first," said Everett. So I played it for them, and Everett lit another joint, which made Maria-Rita get up and leave the room, because she disapproved.

"I think the slaves are immune to the gas, and to the infection, for some reason," I said when the tape was at an end.

"Yep, and the children are probably immune too, since the enslaved humans were apparently rounding  up children after the gas had been released. Which makes a very odd coincidence that might be significant."

"And that is?" 

"The aliens can only eat young, uncontaminated 'food': Babies and very young children, in other words."