Star Bears

Time is a continuum, and the laws of physics apply equally to all of the myriads of creatures in the universe, but different kinds of creatures experience time differently. If you've ever tried to watch a fly for any length of time, you will know that this is so. Flies are difficult to follow precisely because they experience time differently than we do; they often make two or three navigational decisions and change direction several times in the time we take to blink.

The two heroes of our present story experience time differently than we do, and you would notice this even in their language which, aside from roaring and a number of whuffing and erffing sounds such as bears make, also includes a number of very high pitched whistles and calls. Their real names, in fact, are pronounceable only by several species of small birds and by one type of aquatic mammal on our planet; for the sake of simplicity, I shall call them Rajon and Raykiril, which is roughly what their names sound like when run through one of the electronic devices used to study dolphin sounds. For all of this, communications with other species (ours, for instance) represents little difficulty to them, the study of linguistics being far advanced on their world.

Serious space travel involves considerable lengths of time by our standards. Relativity tells us that there is no possibility of one of us beginning on earth, visiting anything say, 35 light years away, and returning to earth within the lifetimes of anybody we knew. That this is not the case for Rajon and Raykiril is due entirely to the different life span of their species and the manner in which they experience time; a two hundred year voyage into the cosmos is to them about what a trip to the corner grocery store is to one of us.

From time to time, their travels and the travels of a handful of their associates, bring these worthies our way. They are charged, particularly, with ascertaining that our species does not begin to represent a threat to their own kind, which conceivably could happen due to time-experience differential; change can occur more rapidly amongst us than amongst them. At such times, they walk amongst men, gathering specimens, conducting interviews, perpetrating kidnappings, and, generally, causing a great deal of excitement. Rajon and Raykiril and their colleagues are somewhat strange to look at by our standards, being distantly related to the bears of our world; their appearances here give rise to stories concerning wolf-boogies, bear-boogies, yetis... all manner of things which enrich the lives of story-tellers, witch-doctors, grand inquisitors, tabloid journalists etc.

Our tale concerns the three most recent journeys which Rajon and Raykiril have made to our planet, the first having occurred during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero. Rajon had disguised himself as a bear, which isn't terribly difficult for him, and had

managed to abscond with two Christians who, in the opinion of the emperor and his (the emperor's) party, he (Rajon) was being paid to eat. Rajon's exit from the coliseum was accomplished via a general breakout of prisoners, gladiators, wild beasts, and Christians. Rajon's conversations with the real bears and lions prior to his departure had left him with the impression that these distant kinsmen were, if anything, more backwards and messed up than the humans, wretched though the latter might be.

At the same time, Raykiril was in England investigating a druidic religious revival, managed to convince the natives that he was worthy of human sacrifice, and made off with a little blond teen-age honey who would otherwise have been sacrificed in painful fashion to a stone idol. The two aliens had parked their shuttle craft high in the Italian Alps out of harms way and were several weeks getting back to this rendezvous point. They left with two Christians, one 16 year old alien groupie, three gladiators, three foul-smelling Picts with blue painted faces and exotic knives, several Germans and Italians, one bear, and two African lions to add to their collection.

Rajon And Raykiril had no conception of killing and/or eating anything which lacked a fighting chance and attempted to question the two lions as to how they might possibly prefer eating the Christians, who struck them as wretched even by human standards, to the gladiators who at least had some meat on them. They succeeded only in starting a violent argument amongst the lions, one of whom claimed that Christians were less filling, while the other, refusing to be swayed by that argument, insisted that they taste great.

"We're not going to get anything out of these two", said Rajon, a disgusted look on his face, as the lions continued their debate oblivious. "All right, you," he continued, gesturing at one of the gladiators, a certain Marcellus Magnificus , "let's hear why you idiots were so eager to be butchering each other for the amusement of that red-haired pig (Nero) and all of those canaille (poor trash, masses, and lower classes) in the stands back there."

The gladiator he had addressed sported facial paint incorporating every color in the rainbow, a hairdo which would have been called unusual even in Roman times, leather-strap armor covering his torso and shoulders, and a legionnaire's short sword. Upon hearing himself thus addressed, this worthy stiffened, began to flex his considerable arm and upper back muscles, quivered, shaking his head with a kind of a far-away look in his face, his eyes rolling back slightly in his head, and, in a low, husky, mysterious voice, replied:

"These guys (pointing at the two other gladiators) come from every rats-nest and piss-mire in the world, and they think they're baaad, they think they're rough, they think ass-kicking got invented where they came from an they're the only ones in the world can kick ass. They think we Romans have gotten soft and corrupted. They think we spend our time in steam baths and orgies, they think they can slander our names all over the place and step on our sandles, they think they can eat Roman children and laugh about it, they think they can haul noble Roman women off in chains and bondage and have their ways with them and laugh at their menfolk..... well I'm here to tell you that these stinking camel-drivers, and goat-hikers, and blue-bellies (looking at the three Picts) and all of these barbarians are in for a shocking, and they're in for a knocking, and they're in for a fall, and they won't stand so tall or so proud when they get in the ring with Marcellus Magnificus... cause I ain't gotten soft an I ain't gotten corrupt. I mean, I'm BAAAAAD, I mean, I still kick ass the old-fashioned way, the way Julius Caesar and Augustus used to kick ass, cause I'm gonna pound em, and I'm gonna grind em, and I'm gonna bind em up in these iron chains, an then I'm gonna take this little sword, same kinda sword our noble Roman forefathers used to tramp their countries under foot, which is where their pig-shit countries belong, an these little babies are sharper'n razors, see, and I'm gonna......."

At this point Raykiril, having heard enough to satisfy his curiosity for the time being, passed his hand in front of the gladiator's face and Marcellus Magnificus lay stupefied in a deep trance. "What about you sorry people..." the alien enquired, gesturing at the Christians. "If I was about to be eaten by one of these far-removed, I mean REAL far removed cousins of mine here, (gesturing at the two lions who were still carrying on their less-filling/tastes-great debate), I can think of at least fifty things I might do off the top of my head, and at least one of them wouldn't require any supernatural powers or technology which you people don't have and that would be to run like hell, but you guys didn't even do that. How come?"

"In the future world, lions and humans will be friends."

"No need to be in any sort of a hurry about it." Replied Raykiril; "You can have a pet lion when we get to where we're going."

"Where'd you get this one?", he asked Raykiril, gesturing at the English girl.

"The Druids were going to cut my heart out and your friend saved me." the girl replied, deliberately letting one of the straps of her white sacrificial gown slip off a rounded shoulder. "The village people all thought your friend was a monster and ran, but I think you two are cute; kind of like bears only smoother and more coordinated than bears, and you definitely smell better than bears." And then, glancing at the real bear: "No offense meant..."

"You're the only one in this whole haul with any sense, aren't you?" replied Rajon, leading the girl from the interrogation chamber, a silken arm around her waist. "My partner will finish questioning the others. Come, I'll show you what your world looks like from a bit higher than you're been before."

The chief executive officer of the organization for which Rajon and Raykiril work is known across the cosmos as the High Magnificent Federal Interstellar Commander, or HMFIC for short, but insiders such as Rajon and Raykiril ordinarily avoid formalities altogether and simply call him "Boss".

"EJ-77-551-D (their term for Earth) may seem like a joke to you two," the HMFIC was saying, a stern look on his face, "but they worry me nonetheless. They react and learn things so quickly, I believe it's only lack of organization which prevents their being dangerous. If, for whatever reason, they were to cease lying, cheating, stealing, and conducting wholesale slaughters against each other for even two hundred of their years... It just worries me, too many strange things going on, too many possibilities. I want you two to check this situation out REAL GOOD the next time you're back that way and let me know what you find. I mean, I want a totally detailed report!"

"You got it, Boss." Raykiril replied.

"And, Raykiril,", the HMFIC continued, "I wish you wouldn't let that yellow-haired creature from EJ-77-551-D ride around on your shoulders the way you do, at least not inside the Federal Compound... it doesn't look good."

"You got it, Boss."

"You think the Boss is getting paranoid in his old age, Rajon?" Raykiril asked.

"Who knows?", Rajon replied, "He's probably seen more harmless looking things go weird on him than we have. What the hell, let's give him a full report and get him off our case, let's stay on EJ-77-551-D a bit longer this time, say 150 of their years or so. Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see any harm in letting EJ-77-551-D go on it's merry way, I mean, it's probably the best comedy show in the galaxy and it's FREE; I'd really hate to see the council do anything heavy-handed and mess it up."

"You see any chance of anybody actually ORGANIZING EJ-77-551-D?" asked Raykiril.

"Not any time soon." replied Rajon. "."

Rajon and Raykiril pulled up into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and spent several days scanning monitor-device tapes, essentially catching up with around 1000 years of earth history, spent several months in central Asia and North China, and then returned to their European parking area in the Swiss Alps and proceeded on foot to Constantinople. They got there on April 14, 1204 AD, just in time for the looting and pillaging; the Venetians and a good many of Pope Innocent III's Crusaders were whooping it up and most of them were on their way to being pretty drunk.

Raykiril encountered a number of them in a tavern: "Hey, you're a bear! sort of..." was about as much as Graf Bohemund of Bohemia could think of to say, while several of his companions watched to see what would happen.

"And you're an idiot." replied Raykiril. "This city has stood for 900 years as a barrier between you sorry people and every kind of pagan horde on the steppe corridor between the Eastern ocean and here, Huns, Avars, Pechenegs, Ghuzz, Cumans, Khazars, Magyars, and God knows what all else. I mean, it's kind of like you guys just burned the lid off Pandora's box. Why???"

"Come on man, don't be such a party pooper. How're we gonna rape and pillage Saracen cities if we don't get no practice?" replied Bohemund. "Besides, the Saracens ain't gonna get past here any time soon."

"The Saracens aren't what you guys need to worry about." retorted Raykiril, "There's a man by the name of Khan I spoke to about two months ago, who's occupied off to the East right now, but he's probably gonna be here in about 15 years. He'll be looking to kick all of your asses, and his idea of kicking ass means skinning and salting about half of you idiots, impaling the other half on sharp sticks, pulling all your cities down brick by brick, and hauling all your women off where you'll never see them again. This city just MIGHT have delayed him long enough for you idiots to TRY to get organized when he comes."

"I can't be worryin about things fifteen years from now..." replied Bohemund, "Besides, you're just a bear; what the hell do bears know about the future?"

"You won't have to worry about that." said Raykiril, producing a small crystalline phial, from a leather pouch only the most acute observer would have noticed under the fur. "You're going on permanent display." The tiny phial emitted a pulsing reddish-orange light and made a strange humming noise. Raykiril parted the fur on his right wrist, exposing a silver bracelet of sorts with complex inscriptions and numerous small buttons and dials, pressed two of the buttons, passed his hand before the crusader, and before the dumbfounded eyes of all other observers in the room, Baron Bohemund of Bohemia was reduced to a tiny specimen INSIDE the silvery phial.

Raykiril placed a small label on the phial, the word "IDIOT" in his language, and departed the Tavern as the remaining Crusaders continued to stare in disbelief.

"I say we don't drink any more of this Greek stuff tonight." said Roland of Rheims. "That was worse than the DTs."

Rajon and Raykiril spent a number of years taking notes and collecting specimens; there were several events worth noting: there was the brilliant Children's Crusade of 1212 AD, most of the participants ending up sold into slavery in North Africa, and there was the nifty crusade on which Pope Gregory IX sent Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor (as the German king was called in those days) in 1228 AD. That was kind of like sending Bud Abbot on a crusade against Lou Costello; Frederick II and the Sultan of Egypt were best of friends.

Frederick and the Sultan staged several SCA-style mock battles for the benefit of papal and other European observers, and secretly signed a ten year lease giving the appearance of Frederick's having re-conquered Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth for the Christian world, returned a hero in less than one year, and proceeded to do some real ass-kicking on the Pope's soldiers who were engaged in an attempt to take over his possessions in Northern Italy (which is why Pope Gregory wanted him off in Egypt for five years or so in the first place). This territorial feuding between the Pope and Frederick II continued until 1237, when Frederick openly declared his intention of making Rome his capital, and Pope Gregory the showpiece in his marionette collection.

But of course, as Raykiril had attempted to point out to the crusaders, the real story of the early 1200's had been taking place in the far off steppeland of central Asia. There, some of the heaviest ass-kicking the world had ever seen had been taking place.

Chenghis Khan and his great general, Subudai, were the very last two people in all of recorded history that you would ever want to tangle with. Chenghis Khan had laid waste two of the really big empires of the world, the North Chinese Kin or Jurchid, and the Turko-Iranian Khwarismian state which had been the military and economic center of the Islamic world. He had forged an empire in the heartland of Asia and a cavalry army with unheard of mobility, discipline, rapidity of maneuver, logistical and tactical support, and firepower.

Chenghis Khan never quite made it as far West as Constantinople, and died in August of 1227 AD. However, in the early Spring of 1241, a 130,000 man Mongolian cavalry army led by his grandson Batui and Subudai, invaded Eastern Europe on a 600-mile front and, on 9 through 11 April, 1241, destroyed a major Polish and Teutonic Knight army at Liegnitz as well as the 100,000-man Hungarian cavalry army, the most serious in Europe, at the field of Mohi. The Mongols rested during the summer and fall of 1241, and in the fall and early winter, crossed the frozen Danube river, sacking the major cities of Hungary as they proceeded, and were laying waste countryside in the early stages of a simultaneous invasion of Austria and Italy.

This was beyond any doubt the greatest threat which Europe had ever faced. The natural question which arises is "Where were the main armies of England, France, Italy, and Germany while all of this was going on?". Basically, Pope Gregory IX was attempting to convene representatives of France and England in Rome to organize a crusade against... would you think against the Mongols, who were threatening to entirely exterminate the Christian world? Of course not; against Frederick II. And Frederick's armies were in Italy preventing any such thing from happening.

Rajon and Raykiril were conducting interviews at St. Peter's Basilica at the time, and chanced upon several Dominican Friars, and a Cardinal of the holy church, a certain Francesco Firlefanzi, who greeted them: "Greetings Brother Bear, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, bless you, and curse that lying, scheming, double-crossing, two-timing, four-flushing, dirty, rotten, low-life son-of-a-bitch Frederick II and his barbarian horde; art thou here to join the crusade?"

"Meanest thou a crusade against the Mongols who have laid waste Russia and all of the lands East of there, and mean quite shortly to do likewise with thee and thy lands?" replied Rajon.

"Nay", for the Lord shall deal with the heathen in his own way and his own time," replied the good Cardinal, "but naturally I mean the crusade against the Apostate, Frederick, who means to bind our holy domain to his secular empire and dictate terms to our holy father, Pope Gregory".

Rajon and Raykiril looked at each other in disbelief. "I guess everything in the universe is relative." said Rajon and, suiting actions to words, Rajon produced another of the glowing phials, put Cardinal Firlefanzi in it, removed the "IDIOT" label from the phial containing Bohemund of Bohemia and placed it on Cardinal Firlefanzi's phial.

"The injury of being in the bottle must thou yet endure, yet might thou rejoice in knowing that the insult has been removed from thee and applied to another", spoke Raykiril, and Bohemund smiled inside the glowing container and made the thumbs-up sign.

Certain types of bears are territorial, and one of the more territorial varieties had observed Rajon and Raykiril traveling through a section of the forest which he regarded as his. This worthy had advanced at a run, intending to challenge the newcomers when he noticed something amiss; having been a delinquent in his youth and having left the lair before entirely learning the law as young bears ordinarily do, he did not recognize the two star bears for what they were.

"I used to know a bear about as ugly and dumb-lookin as you two." he said. "His mama done met up with some kind of a gorilla or an orangutan bout six months before he was born!"

"Want to take him with us?" asked Rajon.

"Hell no, we've got plenty of bears." replied Raykiril and, then, turning to the bear: "Thou hadst best look to thine own safety; hoodlums of thine ilk who address us thusly have a curious way of ending up in stew pots." The two aliens proceeded on their travels.

Subudai and several of his captains of thousands and one or two of the Mongol Yurchtis (map and logistic experts), as well as several Chinese artillery officers, were engaged in a discussion of sorts outside the smoking ruins of the city of Gran, the main center of commerce in Hungary prior to then. "You know," Subudai was saying, "Sometimes it gets to me, I mean you go six or seven months in the saddle and all you get to eat is yogurt and dried beef strips and horses blood and maybe water if you're lucky. You ever get the feeling like you're hungry but you don't really know what for and you know if you eat anything else but whatever it is you're hungry for, you'll still be hungry? You know what I mean?"

"Hast considered hungarian food, lord, surely there is no shortage of it here." queried one of the Chinese artillery masters, a sage by the name of Poo-Poo-Wah-Ding-Lee.

"I'd rather starve than poison myself, Poo-Poo." replied the orkhan.

At this point, the Asians noticed something they had never seen before: what appeared to be two bears shuffling across the field towards them. "What do you make of that!?" asked one of the captains of thousands. "I never saw a wild animal walk into an army camp before."

"I'll tell you what I'm GONNA make of it!" replied Subudai, reaching across the table for a composite saddle bow and beginning to string it. "My grandma had 13 different recipes for bears and I'll betcha I can remember at least 11 of them!"

Several of the Chinese began to tremble with fear, three falling to their knees and kow-towing towards the new arrivals. Poo-Poo-Wah-Ding-Lee made a polite sort of a cease and desist hand gesture before the orkhan. "Star bears, lord, not of our world, very, very old, very wise, they may not be harmed. Thine arrows like as not would not harm them and, even were they to, the retribution which followed would engulf the entire world in flames!"

"Shit!" said Subudai, "I hate entertaining guests when I haven't eaten."

"Thou hast a hungry and unquiet look about thee for so great and famous a lord." spake Raykiril to the orkhan. "Meant thou to dine upon these unfortunates?", gesturing at a number of the merchants of Gran, whom the Mongols were roasting on spits over an open fire.

It was all Subudai could do to repress his anger: "What thinkest thou we are... barbarians?" he replied. "Hell, even if we were, none of us would eat any of these people. Smells like they take baths more seldom than we do and, friend, that's seldom! Thou see'est merely our system for obtaining information, such as where they hid their gold, where they hid their daughters, where they hid their sheep (some of the guys in my organization are a bit strange), and the lay of the landscape between here and Germany."

"Thou meanest to rule all of the lands between both of the great oceans?" asked Rajon.

"I know it sounds vainglorious," replied the orkhan, "and yet, no man has ever done it. Were we to succeed at it, we would win eternal renown for ourselves, and global dominion for our Lord, Oktai."

"What meanest thou to do after thou hast conquered all of the earth for thy lords?" continued Rajon. "Hast thou any thought to seek MY world and conquer IT?"

"If legends are to be believed, and I think they are," replied the orkhan, "the youngest of my staff would die of old age before we reached thy world, even if we possessed an engine to hurl us there."

"Eternal renown thou hast already won thyself for thy long ride," spake Raykiril, "yet the nature of this world is such that no man or family may entirely govern it for any time. Thy true lord was Chenghis Khan; Oktai is a weakling who shall soon drink himself to death, and others of his family will shortly be warring amongst themselves as thy race ever did before thy great lord bound them into a nation. Thou hast conquered the greater part of the world, yet thou hast made of it a smoking ruin which no man might profit from ruling, and thou dost dine less well here than thou might in thine own land, had'st thou not left it".

"Even the Christians refrain from party-pooping." replied the orkhan. "Surely on your world you have not abolished war?!"

"We kill party-poopers on my world," spoke Rajon, "and we have wars on a regular basis, every hundred and thirty or so of your years, but we do not allow wars to ruin our cities or our world; wars are fought under strict rules with fang and claw and blunt weapons, and the winners may take a portion of the losers' honeycombs as well as their eldest daughters, which works out well since we, like thine own people, are exogenous."

"And what of tactics and cavalry, and the glorious art of archery?" inquired another of the Mongols, one of the captains of thousands.

"We have banished all weapons which kill from a distance." replied the alien. "It is but a short step from bows and the black powder which thou dost even now begin to use as a weapon, to weapons which, at the wave of a hand, might ignite your entire world and burn it to cinders. We have such weapons, and we reserve them against the day when we might be be required to wage war against a nation such as thine own, but we do not use them in our own wars. Were that to be allowed, the vilest and most evil person of our world might be enabled to rule it."

"If thou art truly as wise as legends have it," Subudai queried, "perhaps thou could'st explain to us something which we have regarded as a riddle. We had never had a ruler such as Chenghis Khan previously and may, as thou sayest, never have one such again; we have tried diligently to understand everything he told us, but there is one lesson which he spoke just before he died, which we have never been able to understand. He said several things which were easy enough to comprehend," continued the orkhan, "such as 'Winning isn't everything, it's the ONLY thing!', and 'Do unto others, before they do unto you!', but then he spoke some kind of a parable which we've not been able to understand properly. He said, 'Always remember, nice guys come in last!' Perhaps thou knowest, what is a nice guy?"

Rajon laughed out loud and Raykiril could not repress a chuckle. Raykiril replied "Only a hypothetical case, a kind of a metaphysical construction. He meant the parable for a much later day and a generation of thy people not born yet, several hundred of thy years from now. The term has no meaning in thy world now and thou might sleep easily and not worry about it, it cannot harm thee."

Subudai smiled, greatly pleased thus proven not to have misunderstood his lord or to have, perhaps unknowingly, disobeyed or misconstrued a meaningful directive.

"Since thou hast treated us respectfully, and since our own laws and operational procedures prevent our interfering in military campaigns on foreign worlds," spake Rajon, "we shall leave thee in peace, all save thee (gesturing at the sage, Poo-Poo-Wah-Ding-Lee), in whom I detect the ancient curse of curiosity; thou might come with us at thy pleasure and learn what thou will, however, know that when thou shalt return, a thousand of thy years shall have passed, and all of these, thy companions, shall be but dust and antique ghosts".

"As for thee," the alien continued, again addressing the orkhan, "thou should'st know that one of the bears of thy world did address us disrespectfully several miles back in a glade in yon forest, and if thou dost make haste with thy bow, thou might yet find him there and, perhaps, put one of thy grandmother's recipes to good use."

These words spoken, the two aliens departed, the Chinese sage following behind them after waving fare-well (and probably "Thank God I don't gotta work for these crazy suckers no more!") to the Mongols. Shortly thereafter, they departed EJ-77-551-D and were back to traveling at nearly light-speed.

Here on EJ-77-551-D, it was the year 1965. You kind of lose track of time going out into the realm of stellar distances, but, basically, a number of representatives of the governing council of Rajon and Raykiril's world, and several of other worlds who studied under them, chanced to be on a forward station of their empire about 20 light years away from us at the time. The HMFIC was in a screaming rage, his ears and the hair on his back standing straight up and his nose actually turning purple: "Harmless!!! Right!" A simple pastoral people who wage warfare with strung bows and feathered shafts!!?! right!!!", Mostly just booze and sex orgies!! Right!!!", the HMFIC shrieked: "This is what we've been picking up from EJ-77-551-D for the last few 10-7 time intervals! I want you two idiots to take one hell of a good look at it!!"

News and information of any sort travel through space at speeds no greater than that of light; The HMFIC was gesturing at one of the large screens on the wall of the master observation center, and what Rajon and Raykiril were seeing on the screens were very obviously uranium bomb explosions, the destructions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki which had occurred in 1945.

"Shit!!!" said Rajon;

"God damn! I wouldn't have thought it!!" said Raykiril.

"Senator Ramondine here is going with you two this time" continued the HMFIC, and if he can convince me not to worry about EJ-77-551-D when you all get back, I'll stop worrying about it. otherwise..."

"We'll be ready to go in 5 10-10s, replied Rajon, and 5 10-10s later, he along with Raykiril, the senator, several soldiers (since there was every reason now to regard EJ-77-551-D as a dangerous place), and several former denizens of EJ-77-551-D, were off and away, again, very nearly at light speed. This time, they were in a good bit of a hurry and, to make matters worse, upon arriving back at the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt, they discovered that their advance observation and taping station had been damaged beyond recovery some 300 years prior by a wandering meteorite.

"There doesn't seem to be any help for it." said Rajon, "We're going in blind... we're just going to have to check the place out and try to figure out what all's happened."

"I'm getting just ALL kinds of radio-frequency signals, Lord Rajon." said one of the soldiers, "Half of its's sensor signals, we're not gonna be able to just waltz in there and not get shot at."

Raykiril also was glued to sensors and earphones: "There's something else I'm picking up here, real strange." he said to Rajon.

"I see... I was noticing that." replied Rajon. "There no longer seems to be any possibility of bears or other large creatures just walking around in cities any more, does there?" "Unless you can think of some way to disguise ourselves as HUMANS, we're either gonna have to go as werewolves and hope people think we're going to a costume party, or get used to being chased and shot at all the time, or...".

"We'll think of something." replied Senator Ramondine. "Let's just get on with it."

The aliens lashed themselves and the returning humans tightly into their seats and drove straight at the north pole of EJ-77-551-D at speeds great enough to convince Soviet and American radar operators that they were merely a stray aerolite from the expanses of the cosmos, and then peeled out over the Pacific Ocean no more than 75 feet from it's surface, thus continuing low and at high speeds to one of their sub-surface parking areas off the coast of Korea. They spent several months in Korea and China and about a month and a half in Japan, and then headed west, passing through the Soviet Union, Poland, Germany and England, and arriving at the Big Apple in the early Fall of 1985.

The aliens and their entourage were staying in a 45'th floor flat with a view to the South Bronx.

"I agree there's something wrong with the books we've been seeing" said Rajon, "I mean, Japan and Germany just don't look like countries which lost a major war 40 years ago, and I agree that this (gesturing towards the window), in all likelihood, is the zone which must have been hit by the uranium bomb". "However, we're never going to figure any of it out traveling around at night dressed like party-goers and sneaking around in libraries stealing books. I say, we've got to figure a way to travel in daylight and mingle with the people out there and get some serious answers".

"Any ideas as to how to do all that?" asked Raykiril.

"As a matter of fact, I do have an idea." replied Rajon.

Three weeks later, amongst numerous of the pre-teen and teen-age denizens of the big apple, as well as amongst the various groups who attend events at Madison Square Garden, a great many conversations were centering on one of the Garden's hit new attractions.

"I mean, Ah've SEEN some bad tag-teams befo..." little Anthony was saying, "an Ah've seen a lot of dudes think they's bad, but, Ah wanna tell ya, that Marcellus Magnificus and them beahs o his is BAAAAAAAAD!!!!!".

"Did you heah them beahs roar!?!" asked Plukie.

"Yeah and he was gonna cut them OutRiders you-know-whats off with that little sword!! Ah mean, that's BAAAAD, an in that interview, he was talkin CHURCH language like Julius Caesar. You's a Catholic Roscoe, you got any idea what he said??"

"He say, he was the baddest they evah was back when Nero was in chahge o things, an t'aint nobody baddah evah come along since." replied Roscoe. "He say him an Mister Nero used to feed his beahs bettah people than them OutRidahs fo they breakfas, an he look like he mean it, too, an that manigah o his look like Fu Man-chooo! Ah mean, they is some BAAAAAAD people, an them beahs is bad!"

Marcellus Magnificus was walking along East 142'nd Street, Rajon, Raykiril, Senator Ramondine, and several of the alien soldiers, imitating bears as usual, were shuffling alongside, the crowds were waving, whistling, and shouting encouragement, and reporters from the tabloid press were following behind.

"You're one right good-lookin beah, Sugah." shouted one of the streetwalkers. "You evah get lonely or anything, you come ring the bell right ovah there at the desk at the Mayfair an you ask fo Hilda!"

"Ah Might jus do that sometime." answered Senator Ramondine. "Right now tho, we're jus lookin fo some infahmashun. Is it true we blew up them Japanese with a ur-anium bomb back in 1945? I's jus a beah, you can tell me the truth, Sugah, an won't nobody know you done tol me nothin..."

"Sho nuff!" replied the streetwalker, laughing out loud. "We nuked them suckahs till they glowed in the dahk, an then them ole P-51's came out lookin fo em at night! You be shoah you look me up next time you're in New Yoahk City, heah?"

"You got it" replied the senator.

"You're getting the hang of it", Rajon said to the senator.

"I'm starting to believe it too." replied the senator. "These people can't ALL be crazy".

"You guys just make up most of the shit you publish anyhow." Raykiril was speaking to a representative of the National Perspirer Tabloid, "What makes you think anybody would take an interview with us or any of these pictures seriously?"

"It doesn't even matter, man, the folks who read our paper are like wrestling fans, they don't really care whether there's any reality in our articles. Reality these days is pretty gross, but these are GOOD pictures, I mean we can't even FAKE anything like this. I'll do anything you want, just let me have copies of these five photos!"

"We need information..." continued Raykiril, "We come here every five or six hundred years or so, and it's damned hard for us to get a fix on what's going on here. Our long-range sensors got damaged a while back and we kind of came in here blind this time. We expected to find a three-way war between Moslems, Christians, and Tartars being fought with uranium bombs. I enjoy this place myself, but my boss thinks this planet has become a threat to the galaxy in general and halfway wants to torch it, if nothing else, just so he can get some sleep at nights and not have bad dreams".

"Anything you want..." said the reporter.

"We're just now beginning to believe that this city isn't the one which got nuked forty years ago," quieried Rajon, "but it looks worse than the ones that did. What the hell happened here?"

"The Japanese cities only had to deal with the USAF." replied the reporter. "They only got bombed once, but this city has to deal with HUD, the city government and all those federal agencies, that's the same as getting bombed every day."

"I don't quite understand that." said the senator.

"For instance," replied the reporter, "they got a law says that if an old project building burns down, the names of the people who lived in it go to the top of the list for NEW housing. That's the beaurocratic equivalent of a thousand-plane raid, like over Tokyo, only it's permanent."

"What about real thermonuclear weapons??" inquired Senator Ramondine. "Apparently you've had them for some time... what keeps you from using them?"

"Just dumb luck, I guess." replied the reporter; "That, an the fact it'd be bad for business. Say, you guys are probably sitting here thinking this city's normal for America or something. Most of America ain't like this at all; what say we go out driving for a few days and get a look at the countryside and the normal cities and towns. Did you guys actually get to talk to Chenghis Khan the last time you were here or are you just shittin me???"

"No shit" replied Rajon, "Hell of a guy..."

Three days worth of amber waves of grain, K-Marts, talk shows, rodeos, shopping malls, country&western cafes, Smoky and the Bandit chases etc. etc. later, the aliens and the reporter were approaching the outskirts of a major metropolitan center. It was about one o-clock on a brisk Saturday afternoon.

"There's only one thing I really don't understand about what I'm seeing here." remarked Rajon to the reporter. "Six hundred years ago, the primary focus of your entire world was religion, and I can't believe that it could have so entirely passed out of existence or ceased to be important".

"What do you mean?" replied the reporter, "we have all kinds of churches, everywhere you go in fact, look there're two of em right in front of us, Episcopal and Baptist, what do you want?"

"Get serious!" barked Raykiril. "Those two churches don't seat more than 300 people together, and neither one of em's more than 100 feet high. That's not serious. What my friend meant is that religion used to be THE thing, THE place to be, where it was happening, pomp, ceremony, high drama, casts of thousands, intrigue, the whole show, and this was only a few hundred years ago. All we've seen so far are these little churches that seat a couple of hundred people and a couple of goofy tent-evangelists who mostly attract old people. Whatever could have happened?"

The answer to their question appeared on the horizon as they turned the next corner; the aliens all saw it and made the connection at the same instant, and the reporter was awe-struck at the simple logic of the equation.

"Holy shit!!!" said Rajon.

"Great Shaggy Mamma!!!" said Raykiril (voicing an expression from his world in English).

"Lord, we're comin home" said Senator Ramondine and, turning to the reporter, "How much are tickets?"

The odd assemblage drove into the parking lot of the city's major center for religious events, parked, purchased tickets (fortunately, the event was not a total sell-out, about 7000 seats out of 85000 empty or no-shows), and went in. It was half time. The star bears, along with the reporter, the sage Poo Poo Wah Ding Lee, and Marcellus Magnificus, who was beginning to be recognized wherever he went, had low seats on the forty-yard line. There was no shortage of beer or hot dogs.

"This is more like it!" remarked Senator Ramondine.

Several scantily-clad cheer leaders came up for a closer look. "Could I pet one of the bears?" one asked.

"Take your pick" replied the former gladiator, making a thumbs up gesture.

"Me, Me!!" blurted out Rajon.

"I saw her first!!!" yelped Raykiril"

The girl had unknowing uncovered one of the great weaknesses of the denizens of Rajon and Raykiril's world: that NOTHING makes them feel so good as being scratched behind the ears, but, that given the military formalities of their world, they hardly ever come in for any such attention. At the girl's suggestion, a certain portion of a centurys-old weight of formality and tradition had fallen off like a load of bricks and, had it not been for their fur, Rajon and Raykiril would have been seen to have been red in their faces a second later.

"It's okay, I'll pet this one here and my friend can pet you", the girl replied and, again turning to Marcellus Magnificus, "I thought you were just a wrestler; are you that good a ventriloquist or do the bears really talk?"

"They really talk" replied Marcellus, a smirk on his face.

"Something like 473 languages", last I tried to count" added Senator Ramondine.

The girls were still petting and scratching the two star bears when the third quarter of the game began. The bears, of course, had seen medieval religious festivals, and the spectacle, thrill, and excitement were instantly recognizable to them. Senator Ramondine was finishing his fifth chili hotdog and his third bottle of beer. "Glad I ain't driving!" he said to himself, and then: "Man, if I keep this up, I'm gonna get fatter'n hell!"

More of the dead weight was falling off. The crowd was going wild as the home team was mounting a sustained drive down the field. People stomped until the whole stadium picked up the resonance, shouted at the top of their lungs, whistled, and roared.

The star bears, for all of their military training and science, had never seen triple-option play or serious down-field blocking before. The quarterback for the home team took the ball back from the fullback, raced four steps to his right and turned upfield just inside the outstretched arms of the opposing defensive end, ran about seven yards straight North-South, and pitched the ball to the trailing halfback at the last possible instant as he was hit by the free safety; the wide receiver made a downfield block on the other safety, and the halfback advanced the ball another ten yards before being run out of bounds.

"Man, I never saw nothing like that before!" thought Senator Ramondine to himself. "Those are some serious, for-real tactics, and it looks like that would get you into shape in a hell of a hurry!"

The crowd was going wild. Rajon and Raykiril had their ears laid back and were howling their old war chant until they almost frothed at the mouth: "AHR-Roooooooo-ooooooooo-ooooooooo-ooooo!!" Seventeen thousand years of formality and decorum had fallen away like a gossamer veil in a wind.

"Gracious, I didn't know bears could get that worked up watching a football game" remarked one of the cheerleaders, who was still scratching Rajon behind the ears.

Rajon was the first to notice. "Where's the senator?" he asked.

Rakiril looked around, and several of the alien soldiers made a quick search of the area, but nothing; they had their eyes glued on the game as well. The crowd was going crazier than before, and the noise was deafening.

An old redneck with a glass of Budweiser in his hand nudged Rajon in the ribs with his elbow: "God Damn, Man!, did you see the block that number 64 just put on Dennison and that outside linebacker, wiped em both out!!!!"

Rajon and Raykiril both turned to watch the guard in the 64 jersey shuffle back to the huddle, and both noticed the shaggy fur between the helmet and shoulder pads.

"Shit!!!" said Rajon.

"I don't believe it!" remarked Raykiril, "That old bastard's too old to be doin that, he's gonna get killed!"

"Relax!" replied the old redneck, "Wishbone teams don't pull guards... nobody ever got killed zone-blocking!"

Marcellus the gladiator shrugged his shoulders, the star bears shrugged their shoulders in a kind of a collective "What the hell!" gesture, and everybody simply continued watching the game.

A member of the coaching staff was whispering in Rajon's ear: "You guys gotta get outta here kinda quick after the game, there's several NCAA reps in the press box... if your friend wants an athletic scholarship call this number'n ask for Buddy, I'll have him in the regular lineup two weeks from today!", and handed the star bear a business card.

Three hours later, the strange entourage was again in the tabloid journalist's microbus, headed back to New York.

"Man, that's what I call RELIGION!! You got your interview and any kind of photos you need, no problem" the Senator remarked and, turning back to Rajon, "The HMFIC's gotta see this, you guys want to go get him or you want me to?"

I'll go get him" replied Rajon, "the rest of you stick around here and keep an eye on things for a while."

Several days later, astronomers observed an intense blueish light in the Northern sky: the exhaust light of a starship.

Far off in a remote Asian province a communist official and several old Buddhist monks were observing a man standing barefoot in a small stream, who appeared to be conversing with a Panda. The oldest monk approached the stranger, and stared at him for what seemed like a very long time in silence, and then spoke: "Can it possibly be, that thou art the sage who walked with the star bears at the time of the Yuan?"

"Verily, the same", replied the stranger.

"Then, in all truth, thou must have a very great tale to tell, thou must have learned a great deal!" continued the monk, a note of awe in his voice.

"A great deal indeed." replied the sage, slapping a trout from the stream with one hand, "A great deal."

FINIS