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ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING by Dario Ciriello
first published in Quantum Muse, March 2005
Elvis Presley climbed out of the swingbunk and stood unsteadily in the middle of the tiny cabin. He glanced in the mirror, ran a hand through his hair, and opened the cabin seal. Lurching into the main tubeway, he put out a hand for balance and continued on, still a little dizzy from the passage through c-space. Big deal. He remembered a thousand mornings a lot nastier. Besides, this'd get better rather than worse as the day wore on. Day? The heck it was! No days up here, not even any danged up up here, just night and stars and a godawful long way from anywhere. Okay, so maybe it was better than being dead and rotted through, which was what he'd left behind on Earth, how long ago? Almost twenty-five Earth years last time he'd checked, though it sure didn't seem that long -- wasn't, at least not for him, because of that time-dilation thing that happened to everyone shipboard. They'd explained it to him more than once, but he still didn't get it. He rounded a curve and almost ran right into Attafjittararrt'turru, all eight translucent, bluish feet of him. Elvis grinned up at the big guy. "Hey, A.T., how ya doin'?" "Thank you." A.T., who rippled at the best of times, was swaying around like a tornado trying to get anchored. "Less than perfect, but I endure." His spindly arms made a round gesture with a little jag in it. "The c-space passage was somewhat unsettling." Elvis was always fascinated by the pretty way A.T.'s throat fluttered as he spoke, except he wasn't really speaking; A.T. kind of whistled and tooted his speech, but Elvis understood it all the same. Those little problems of translation and making the ship's air breathable for all of them were somehow taken care of by physio modifications when they'd all gotten resurrected in the first place. "Yeah, I feel a little rough myself. Hey, uh..." Elvis pointed down the passage with his thumb. "Seen Ula? She okay?" "Thank you," said A.T., oozing over against the wall to let him pass. "In her quarters. I believe she is well." "How 'bout Deputy Dawg?" "The captain is well also." "I mean, is he. . . it -- " Elvis always had a problem when he thought about the captain. The shaggy, variably-sexed creature was the only person -- being -- other than his Daddy that Elvis had ever been scared of in his whole life, though he could never figure out why. Sure, it was ugly, but it never had hurt him. Did bring him here, though. "It is at the controls. Occupied." A.T. flattened himself even further, taking on the exact curve of the wall. Elvis grinned and winked. He squeezed the big blue guy's arm and eased past him in the narrow passage. "Thank you," said A.T. Elvis looked into the lounge as he passed, but it was empty. Since he'd gotten used to his new life he spent a lot of his free time there, hanging with whoever was available, hearing about the others' past lives and the homeworlds they'd never see again. A couple of times he'd sung a little gospel and told them about the Bible. In return, some of the others had talked about their beliefs, which were mostly really weird. They probably thought the same about his. Ship life wasn't so bad, really. In some ways it was better than being on tour back on Earth, where he'd hardly even gotten beyond his hotel room. He had the freedom of the ship, including the really cool, multiple-environment landscape park; and he got to go outdoors whenever they docked at a new planet. He'd never imagined how different planets and folks -- aliens, anyway -- could be from each other. But he missed girls. Like, really missed them. He missed human folk in general, but much less than he'd have thought. Maybe that wasn't so strange, since half his life had been spent in the company of a very small group of folks, and a lot of that time he'd been pretty messed up. But there'd always been plenty of girls, and this darn body was still a virgin. On the other hand, if he ever somehow did get back to Earth, he'd just be an ordinary guy. Girls wouldn't line up to share his bed they way they used to. But, heck, he'd probably had more tomcatting in his life than any ten ordinary guys, enough that he'd trade the partying for just one steady sweetheart. Dream on, pal. Ula's lock slid open, frictionless components spiraling perfectly, and he stepped into the steamy-sweet atmosphere. He heard the seal whisper shut behind him and felt the pressure balance while his eyes were still adjusting to the rose-gray twilight of her quarters. Shredded, frondy vegetation fluttered in humid breezes generated by hidden climatizers; a lazy, hollow clicking echoed quietly as if from a long ways away. The sounds here were different each time. Once there'd been a braying jumble of cracks and booms and eerie wailing noises, which'd made him real edgy. These were the sounds of Ula's world. She'd told him once that of all the senses, sound carried the most meaning for her. If the spacecraft had been an ocean liner, Ula's quarters would have been the most luxurious stateroom on board. Of all Deputy Dawg's bizarre menagerie, Ula had the wildest and most spectacular talents by far. A couple of the others who came from spacefaring cultures and had traveled over a good stretch of the galaxy all agreed they'd never seen anything like her. She was the star of this road show of resurrected heroes and celebrities from a score of worlds, a universal wonder wherever they docked. For this reason she rated the biggest quarters on the ship, and a full simulation of her homeworld environment. Ula herself was lying on a flat, mossy rock, one golden foreleg dangling in the mirror pool. He felt that light caress against his heart which always came before she spoke. - Welcome, said the voice in his mind. It is sooner than I expected. - Been kind of homesick, Ula. Heading into a system again, you know? Does it to me every time. - Come, sit by me," she said. On the thick, silky moss at Ula's side, he gazed open-mouthed into the cloudy opals of her veiled eyes. Ula -- or the original from which this Ula had been sampled -- was a Hara on her home planet, a kind of natural leader somehow able to link the minds of her ancient and scattered people and help direct their progress. Each generation threw up just one Hara, and there was something like a priesthood whose only purpose was to find each new Hara and care for her. In answer to her mental prompt, he took off his loafers and dangled his feet in the glassy waters. Her dappled tail flicked, curling around behind him so that the end of it came to rest over his left thigh. The first time she did that he'd felt as though his skin were trying to crawl away from the rest of him. Now, he kind of welcomed it. The gal had soul. She reared up, glistening, the spiky ruffle along her chest inflating quickly as the opal membranes over her emerald eyes began to retract. Before they'd even cleared he felt a jolt as though he'd been brushed with a cattle prod, and he knew he'd be gone the instant he met her stare directly. He did it anyway. His surroundings unmade themselves from the edges inward, until he was sucked into the green sea of her eyes. Suns and worlds and scads of time brushed against him, offering his flapping mind a dizzying choice of probabilities, and snatching them away in an eyeblink. God! she was so strong this time, he thought, as the black wind swept him away. # On these trips, his mind and Ula's became downright fused -- had to be, he guessed, since it was her mental abilities that let him revisit Earth across the awful black emptiness of interstellar space in what he thought of as real time. He just had to think of where he wanted to go next, and she took him there with only a quick, wrenching snap! in his ghost-mind to let him know anything at all had happened. He'd been thinking of Graceland. The old place was closed for the night, but that only made it more peaceful. He moped around, a ghost pausing here and there, lingering most over the huge record collection which had given him so much pleasure. Dang! All these years, and everyone was still getting fat off of his career. How long could they keep it going? What would any of it mean in two or three generations, when no living memories of him were left? They kept the place real well, though, he had to admit. She'd last taken him there just before the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, and he couldn't believe the crowds. He was still the King to his fans, and they still loved him. If only they could see him as he was now --young again, fit, ready to rock. His resurrected self knew all the old songs and chords and stage moves that had driven the fans wild. . . heck, he had every memory of his Earth-life, forty-two years of it, right up to the time Deputy Dawg's tiny probe had sampled his DNA and mapped his consciousness just a few months before his death. They'd re-grown him to around age twenty-five in less than one ship-year, then dumped his consciousness matrix right back into his head before they took him out of the tank. He'd seen them do it to others since. It put a whole new spin on the expression 'born again'. At first, it had been rough. Real rough, like his mind was still hooked on the pills and stuff, even in this new body. He'd sweated and hurt and cramped and bitched for what seemed like forever. It was Ula got him through. He'd been mean to her at first -- hated her, hated them all. A shipful of weird-looking freaks, and every one of them being treated better than him. Until the day he'd got so frustrated and lonely he'd broke down and wept. He let her in, then. Ula, with her easy way of seeing into his head, helping him face his demons one by one, until they dried up and blew away like so much dust. And when the homesickness got too bad, she'd offered to take him back to Earth in mind-travel. - You need to sing, and play guitar again, she'd told him one day. At Ula's request, Deputy Dawg had taken him to see the robot techs who ran the synth and production halls which, along with the drive systems, took up the back two-thirds of the huge ship. Under Elvis' guidance, they'd built him guitars and recording decks and rhythm machines. The only thing he couldn't do was hear anyone else's music or singing. He'd never enjoy Ella, or Carl, or even that old fart Caruso again. But he practiced every day, and he was better than he'd ever been. Given the chance, it'd be straight back to his rockabilly roots. Get a tight rhythm section -- couple of hot youngsters on an acoustic bass and stand-up drums --and put out a spare, lean sound. . . Yeah, right. He remembered the chart Deputy Dawg'd shown him a few weeks back. The Earth was two-thirds of the way across the galaxy, and now they were headed for some place called Zondor. He felt Ula nudge his mind. You are sad, Elvis? He'd asked her once if she could use her power to wipe his mind clean, take the pain and loss away forever. She'd replied that yeah, probably she could, but wouldn't. He was her friend, she'd said, and she didn't want to lose him. She took him to downtown Memphis to check out his old haunts again. At least the Western Steak House was still there. He moped around inside for a few moments, but the old place was losing more of its appeal with every trip.
For the first time on one of these trips, he was glad it was just mind travel. A body could've cried. - Elvis? - I want to be there, Ula. No offense, but I mean really be there. Like, in person. Touching Earth, smelling it, not just -- he stopped himself. She was doing everything she could for him. - Let's just go back, he told her. # He woke with a start to a crashing noise in his cabin. Not quite in his cabin, he realized, as the door shivered under a heavy blow, followed an instant later by Deputy Dawg's gruff voice calling his name. He leapt out of the bunk and made a grab for his pants. "Captain? Just – " The door swung open, and Deputy Dawg filled the doorway. It entered the tiny space and lowered its huge, shaggy bulk onto the single chair, making the seat sag by several inches and the alloy legs bow a little. The Captain probably weighed as much as an elk. Elvis sank back on the bed, pants around his knees, too terrified to do anything else. The Captain's red, wart-rimmed eyes squinted at him with unknowable purpose; alien spittle and bits of food clung to the fur around its mouth and neck. It had awful breath. He wondered, not for the first time, if the Captain was carnivorous. "Well?" it rumbled. Christ, somehow he'd made it mad! "Captain, I'm real sorry. Whatever it is that -- " "No. I meant, are you well?" Elvis let his breath out. "Uh, yeah. Thank you." "Ula says otherwise. She says you are un-ha-ppy." It said the word with a kind of alien sneer, like it didn't get it. "She says you need to visit your planet." "Well, uh. I. . . That is -- " "Of course, it matters little," the Captain went on. You are a peripheral attraction. But Ula. . . " it shook its head. "She, I must consider. Besides, I dislike the thought of your melancholy affecting your performance. How long would you require on your world?" Elvis stared. "I. . . huh?" The Captain repeated its question loudly enough that the swingbunk rattled in its brackets. "I -- I thought. . . the show at Zondor. . ." "Earth is only one pinchfold through the c-space tetra-axis at this threxling," said the Captain. "And we are early. We could make a brief visit and still arrive at Zondor in good time. Well?" # They came out of c-space low to the ecliptic and close in. "Elvis!" Deputy Dawg's snarl over the com made Elvis bang his head on the overhang as he jerked upright on his bunk, queasy as ever from the jump. "We are in Earth's system, passing the inner gas giant. To the bridge!" He hurried along the tubeway, stopping at Ula's lock just long enough to com her, but the moment he touched the plate he heard her voice in his mind. Are you happy? she asked, and he thought he heard a little edge of excitement in her thought-voice. - Like an ol' hound dog with a bone, he said. Thanks again, Ula! - Go, then! she said, and sounded like she was laughing. Earth was fat and swirly blue-white on the viewscreen, and it took his breath away. They were looking at Asia and the Pacific and the Western US, and a slice of nightshadow creeping over the far edge of the world, somewhere around the Rockies, he guessed. The Captain turned to him, looking no less mad than usual. "So!" it barked, "what is your pleasure?" Without thinking, he stepped right up toward the screen, pointed, and said "Vegas!" "Very well. We will settle in a high orbit and we can take the shuttle – " "Uh, did you say we?" "Certainly. I shall enjoy a little time on a world myself. And Ula, of course. We might even get a booking for some future appearance." "Captain, I, ah. . . well they might get the wrong idea down there. See, Earth's really kinda primitive by galactic standards." It glowered at him, face fur deepening several shades. Elvis swallowed. Better not push his luck. # "I don't remember your planet being so hostile," said the Captain, with what might have been a frown; it was always hard to tell its expressions. Elvis groaned. He'd never have thought that travel with space aliens meant being seasick most of the time. A pair of fighter jets had buzzed the shuttle, probably mistaking them for Russkis; when they roared past a second time, lights and alarms went off all over the craft. "Missiles!" barked Deputy Dawg as he put the shuttle into a tight roll, made some quick adjustments to the controls, and hit the gas; after that they weren't bothered again. It was dark when they touched down under a row of palms in a small park. They'd taken pills so they could breathe okay, but the Captain hadn't said how they'd avoid attracting unwelcome attention anywhere they went. It turned out not to be a problem. The cab driver -- a dark, intense-looking guy with a turbaned head and full beard -- hardly glanced at them as they climbed in. "Embassy Suite? No, please, you in front." He pointed at Elvis as the Captain reached for the front passenger door. "Not possible to see past Wookie." "Uh, actually, just take us to Caesar's," said Elvis, holding the rear door open as Ula eeled her way into the cab, flipping her tail up into her lap. Deputy Dawg muttered something alien and ugly as it lumbered around to the rear driver's side. "Star Wars Convention is at Embassy Suite, not Caesar. And Elvis contest not until December," argued the driver, as hew swung the cab a tight U-turn. Elvis's stomach turned over again. The driver glanced at his rearview, taking in Deputy Dawg in the back seat, and broke into a grin. "You have Earth money for fare, Wookie?" Deputy Dawg placed a huge paw on the cabby's shoulder. "Do what Elvis says," it growled. The cabby frowned; his head waggled a little. "Very well, but is all wrong. Long walk to Embassy Suite from Caesar. Long wait until December." He worried his beard a while, then added, "and Elvis older and fatter, also." # "HA!" cried Deputy Dawg, as the croupier pushed another stack of chips across to it. In less than an hour at the roulette wheel it had only lost a couple of early spins and was holding forty-some thousand dollars of house money. It was on its fifth Long Island Iced Tea, and seemed to be enjoying itself. Ula sat to the Captain's right, tail curled around her stool, sipping Crème de Menthe and looking as much like a star as any gold-tinged, telepathic, mer-dragon, high priestess could. The gal loved life, you could tell. Seemed like she was never down. Elvis stood behind them, nursing a diet Coke and starting to fret a little. A crowd had formed around the table, and a wary-eyed pit boss had come in with the new croupier, set on distracting the Captain from his game by making light conversation. The Captain wasn't having any of it. "Again!" it barked, pointing a shaggy finger at the wheel, as it spread hundred-dollar chips around the baize with its other paw. The croupier glanced at the pit boss. The boss's eyes flicked over the piles of chips the Captain had scattered about, and his jaw took a harder set. He glanced up at the mirrored ceiling and touched his right ear, and Elvis noticed the tiny loop of wire running from behind the ear into his shirt collar. "Captain," whispered Elvis, leaning in close to its great head, "they don't like people to win too much in these places. Maybe we should go see a show or something." The Captain threw back the rest of its drink and licked its lips. "Nonsense! I'm just beginning to understand this game. Ah, thank you, my lovely," it said to the leggy, toga-clad hostess as she replaced his empty glass with a full one, handing her a pair of hundred-dollar chips. The hostess beamed at him. The croupier gave the wheel a spin. "Captain," whispered Ula, "I think Elvis is right. I sense –" "No! The game expands! Probabilities diverge! Go, seek other amusements together. The time will be brief enough." He handed them a three-inch stack of hundred-dollar chips. "Now go!" Elvis and Ula looked at one another. The ball rattled over the slots on the wheel's rim. "No more bets, please," said the croupier. # "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but we don't allow costumes in the audience." Elvis pleaded with the bouncer. They'd arrived halfway through the concert and paid four hundred bucks for a pair of seats. "Heck, what kind of dumb rule is that? Last time I played this joint you were letting in guys in torn jeans and tank tops!" The bouncer gave Elvis the raised eyebrow. He shook his head slightly in warning or pity, it was hard to tell which. - Wait, Elvis heard Ula say in his mind, I have a solution. She was in the powder room a long while. He'd begun to fret when he saw a pair of black-stockinged legs straight out of a Vogue magazine ad walking toward him. They belonged to a tall, full-figured redhead in a short, eye-twistingly low-cut black cocktail dress. His knees turned to water and his heart stopped cold. He hadn't seen a girl like that in. . . well, he wasn't sure he'd ever seen a girl like that. This gal was in a class of her own. And now here she was, and he stood helpless as she wound her arm into his and said, "Shall we?" There was a trace of scent about her, steamy-sweet. He looked up into her face, and was glad that she had a strong hold on his arm. The girl's eyes were cloudy opals. The tail was completely gone. # Ula swayed and tapped her feet along with the rest of the audience as Ricky Scaggs seesawed his bow across the strings in 'Take Me Back to Tulsa'. But terrific as the music was, Elvis's mind was elsewhere: he couldn't keep his eyes off Ula. Built like a '57 Eldorado, she felt real, looked real. But he knew how strong her mind-power was. The body that could put Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe to shame could be just so much hallucination. And he'd come to think of her as attractive in her own natural form. But feelings and desires swirled in his gut till he just didn't know what to think anymore. She turned to him, ruby lips parted in a smile of pure delight: was she listening in on his thoughts? He felt himself blush, grinned weakly, and turned back to the show. Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry, Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to wed thee. . ." Ula put her hand on his arm and turned to him, her face suddenly serious. He leaned in close to her ear. "What is it?" The Captain! she answered in mind-talk, getting up from her seat and tugging at his arm. There is trouble. We must hurry! # Sirens tortured the air, and the night screamed with flashing blue and the whump of helicopter rotors. They struggled back toward Caesar's, pushing their way forward against a tide of panicked people running away from the place. - The Captain cashed in his winnings and tried to leave the building, said Ula. They attempted to persuade him to stay. . . The great glass entrance to the building was in ruins. A police cruiser bobbed upside-down in the Roman pool, and little knots of officers knelt behind their vehicles, weapons trained on the hulking, shaggy figure climbing one of the elegant marble columns in a blaze of light from the helicopter circling overhead. "COME DOWN AND GIVE YOURSELF UP!" came the booming command. "DON'T FORCE US TO SHOOT!" "Hell, Ula, we gotta stop 'em!" Ula's face was strained. "Away from my pool, my powers are very limited. It seems I can only just send and receive thoughts, and that barely. . . I shall try to stop them hurting him." Elvis wondered that alcohol would have the same effect on the Captain it did on humans; then he remembered the bio-adapt pills they'd all swallowed on the shuttle. So we can all eat the food and breathe the air. The effects will last for forty-eight hours, the captain had told them. "Listen," said Ula, and she must have patched him in, because the next thing he heard was heard Deputy Dawg's voice in his mind. - . . . Sharleen, it crooned, then a little scrap of some discordant alien song, and, it's alright now. . . Sharlee-een. It sounded like really bad alien doo-wop. "GO 'WAY, BUG!" The shaggy figure roared, clinging two-thirds of the way up the column with one hand and taking hopeless swipes at the chopper twenty feet away. "Sharleen?" said Elvis. "The hostess. It gave her the money. Over two hundred thousand – " "THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE! COME DOWN OR. . . JUST COME DOWN, OKAY!" Elvis let out a breath, grateful that Ula had managed that much. The chopper edged a little closer to the Captain and it tried a particularly wild swing at the machine, almost losing its grip in the process. - UGLY, BAD BIRD! I'LL SHOW YOU! The Captain seemed to shrink, compressing a little into a ball, and next thing it was hurtling through the air, propelled up and out in a huge leap by those mighty legs, furred arms outstretched for a heroic grab at the chopper's skids. Elvis held his breath. Ula seized his arm. The captain's leap took it to within three feet of the chopper before gravity got the upper hand and sent it plunging into the pool below. It hit the water like a block of cement, missing the upside-down police cruiser by inches and sending up a circular cataract of water that soaked everyone within a thirty-foot radius. # "Well?" said Ula, as he hung up the phone. "They set bail at a quarter of a million. Funny, that's just a mite over what he took at the tables. This town ain't changed much." "But the cost of the damage. . . " "Aw, insurance'll cover that. How's the captain doing?" It was almost midnight. They were in a phone nook at the Mirage, to which they'd retreated after Deputy Dawg's capture. A dozen cops had jumped it as it struggled out of the fountain, still feisty but too uncoordinated to really resist, trussed it up like a hog, and bundled it off to jail while he and Ula watched helplessly. "It's sobering up. They have it in chains in a cell. None of the officers want to go near it." "They're smarter than I thought. Ula, we gotta get it out, and we don't have long. Right now they think the Captain's just some crazy in a suit, but if they get a doc in there or get the chance to look closer. . . heck, they'll have it in some maximum security lab and be experimenting on it faster'n you can grease a skillet." He had a thought. "If we return to the ship, we can easily replicate the money needed!" "Can you pilot the shuttle, Elvis?" He slapped a hand against the wall. "Darn! There's got to be a way. . . " It was weird being so helpless. Last time he'd been on Earth he could have got anything he wanted just by asking. He'd had all the money he ever needed and a string of folks who could fix any kind of a problem. Now he was just some dead singer who'd had a ton of hits and got written about in the tabloids when they were short of other wacko ideas. Wait a minute. The tabloids. The tabloids! # Instead of the overweight, tired-looking sleazeball he'd expected, Chuck Rhino, the Vegas stringer for the National Enquirer, was young, fit, and very skeptical. "Well, you look enough like the King, I'll give you that, at least in his Sun Record days. And you, ma'am, are, uh, highly photogenic. We could work up a piece on you two along the alien abduction theme, but it'd be twenty kay tops, absolute tops." His eyes slid over to Ula. "Though I know a movie outfit in Van Nuys that'd --" "No," said Elvis. Look, what if we took you to the spaceship? You can take all the pictures you want." "The spaceship?" Rhino snorted his disbelief. "Sure, why not? Anything for a weird life. Where's it parked?" "A quarter million," said Elvis. Rhino snorted. "You got some cojones, man, I'm tellin' ya. Show me the ship and maybe I'll talk to the office in the morning, see what they can do." A short cab ride later, Chuck Rhino ran his hands over the shuttle's frictionless skin and whistled. "Pretty cool, you guys, pret-ty cool! Kinda boring-looking, though. Needs to be more saucer-shaped or something. Maybe we could bondo on some tailfins. . . " Inside, Rhino was even more impressed. "Hey, nice styling! Wow, these controls could almost be real alien stuff." He reached for his camera; Elvis put out a hand to stop him. "It's time to make that call," said Elvis, pointing to Rhino's cellphone. "A quarter million, or no pictures." "Are you nuts, buddy? It's the middle of the night, the office is in Florida, and you think they're gonna come up with the money just like that? Look, here's how it's done: I take pictures of you in the ship, at the controls, with the babe on your lap, and maybe we can get a fee wired upfront. Then I write up a piece and send it in. If the big E likes it, then we can talk. Okay?" "Too slow," said Ula. Elvis sighed. "We need the money tonight." It had been a long shot, and even if Rhino could sell his editor on the idea, it'd be far too late for the Captain. By then they'd be dissecting it at some underground military facility in the Nevada desert. Chuck Rhino snapped his fingers impatiently. "Well?" Thirty years ago Elvis could've called some friends in the Memphis P.D. and had them fix things up for him with the local cops. But America had changed – in fact, Vegas was probably the only place left where you could pull strings at that level by knowing people. However family-friendly it pretended to be, this town would never change. In his head, something banged loud as a mule kicking a stall. Elvis took a deep breath. "Mr. Rhino, would you by chance have any acquaintances in the police department?" # Back in Ula's quarters, the steamy-sweet atmosphere pressed in on him. His head was spinning, not from motion sickness but from excitement. Rhino had taken them down to the police station, gotten the captain's bail lowered to twenty thousand and written out a check there and then. In return, he'd taken a whole series of pictures of the three of them in the spaceship. Deputy Dawg was still a tad wobbly and they'd had to strap it into the pilot's chair to stop it sliding out, but Rhino said it was good enough. Now, he was being offered the chance to stay. "You saved my life," the Captain had said, "and for that, I am beholden. Name your thank-price; even, if you wish, your freedom to remain on the planet below." Elvis trembled at the possibility. But what would going home mean? Down on Earth they'd made him into some kind of God. He was too well-known to live any sane kind of life, especially if he wanted to sing again. What would he do for money? How could he explain his reappearance? At best, he'd be taken for another of his impersonators. At worst, he could see himself being hounded, hunted, interrogated, and finally enjoying a long retirement in a padded cell. A trickle of sweat ran down from his temple. He could have plastic surgery, but that cost money. And how'd he even get a Social Security card? And who'd he hang out with? Who was left that he really cared about? It hurt to even think of Priscilla -- besides, she was twice his new age and had a whole new life. His folks were gone, probably most of his friends, too. There was Lisa Marie. But what would he say to her? A resurrected, drug-free, younger-than-his-daughter Elvis, fresh off a spaceship and broke, asking a bed for the night and maybe a couple hundred thousand bucks to get started again? Yeah, right. - Elvis? The world didn't want him. It wanted his myth. - Elvis? Can I help? Her tail was warm around his shoulders. - Ula? - Yes? - Ula. . . when you changed back there, in Vegas. . . He swallowed. He heard her soft laugh in his head, and felt her tail tremble on his shoulders. The change took seconds. She shimmered and flowed, golden forelimbs to milky arms, tail to black-stockinged legs, chest ruffle to stroke-inducing breasts swelling inside the same slinky cocktail dress. Her eyes, though still veiled in opal, looked at him in a way most definitely human. He realized he'd stopped breathing. - Ula? She leaned forward very slowly, by degrees, allowing him plenty of time to decide, to retreat, to -- He put a hand on her bare shoulder. It was warm. Soft. Very human. His lips met hers in the gentlest of kisses. Her eyes closed. After a moment, she pulled back very slightly and looked at him, smiling. There was color in her cheeks. He reached forward to kiss her again, and she put out her palm in gentle restraint. He heard her laughter in his mind. - Not yet, she said. First, I have a request. . . # He returned to her quarters just a few moments later, carrying the big acoustic guitar. She sat sidewise on the mossy rock, dangling a hand in the glassy pool, playing with the water between her fingers. The hollow, clicking background noise of her world had been replaced by a sound so familiar that he'd not even noticed it at first. Crickets. He stood a few feet away at the edge of the rock, the guitar slung easily across his chest. He strummed a C chord, and she smiled. He began to sing Love Me Tender, her favorite. As his voice swelled and rang with a richness that brought ripples to the surface of Ula's mirror pool, the rose-gray twilight of her quarters slowly faded to the softness of a Tennessee moon.
THE END
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