Tim’s grin grew so wide it was almost painful. He was becoming drowsy because that outburst in the counsellor’s office had expended a lot of energy, but there was one more thing he could do before he dropped off to sleep. He crept from his bed, went to the door on tiptoe, and carefully urinated through the gap on to the landing carpet outside. Then, chuckling, he scrambled back under the coverlet and a few minutes later was lost in colourful dreams.
The doorbell rang when his mother was in the bathroom and his father was calling on the lawyers to see whether the matter of the dog could be kept out of court after all.
At once Lorna yelled, “Tim, stay right where you are—I’ll get it!”
But he was already heading for the door at a dead run. He liked being the first to greet a visitor. It was such fun to show himself stark naked and shock puritanical callers, or scream and yell about how Dad had beaten him mercilessly, showing off bruises collected by banging into furniture and blood trickling from cuts and scratches. But today an even more inspired idea came to him, and he made a rapid detour through the kitchen and raided the garbage pail as he passed.
He opened the door with his left hand and delivered a soggy mass of rotten fruit, vegetable peelings and coffee grounds with his right, as hard as he could and at about face-height for a grownup.
Approximately half a second later the whole loathsome mass splattered over him, part on his face so that his open mouth tasted the foulness of it, part on his chest so that it dropped inside his unzipped shirt. And a reproachful voice said, “Tim! I’m your Friend! And that’s no way to treat a friend, is it?”
Reflex had brought him to the point of screaming. His lungs were filling, his muscles were tensing, when he saw what had arrived on the threshold and his embryo yell turned into a simple gape of astonishment.
The Friend was humanoid, a few inches taller than himself and a great deal broader, possessed of two legs and two arms and a head with eyes and a mouth and a pair of ears . . . but it was covered all over in shaggy fur of a brilliant emerald green. Its sole decoration—apart from a trace of the multi-coloured garbage it had caught and heaved back at him which still adhered to the palm of its left hand—was a belt around its waist bearing a label stamped in bright red letters AUTHORISED AUTONOMIC ARTEFACT (SELF-DELIVERING), followed by the Patterson family’s address.
“Invite me in,” said the apparition. “You don’t keep a friend standing on the doorstep, you know, and I am your Friend, as I just explained.”
“Tim! Tim!” At a stumbling run, belting a robe around her, his mother appeared from the direction of the bathroom, a towel clumsily knotted over her newly-washed hair. On seeing the nature of the visitor, she stopped dead.
“But the rental agency said not to expect you until—” She broke off. It was the first time in her life she had spoken to an alien biofact, although she had seen many both live and on tri-vee.
“We were able to include more than the anticipated quantity in the last shipment from Procyon,” the Friend said. “There has been an advance in packaging methods. Permit me to identify myself.” It marched past Tim and removed its belt, complete with label, and handed it to Lorna. “I trust you will find that I conform to your requirements.”
“You stinking bugger! I won’t have you fucking around in my home!” Tim shrieked. He had small conception of what the words he was using meant, except in a very abstract way, but he was sure of one thing: they always made his parents good and mad.
The Friend, not sparing him a glance, said, “Tim, you should have introduced me to your mother. Since you did not I am having to introduce myself. Do not compound your impoliteness by interrupting, because that makes an even worse impression.”
“Get out!” Tim bellowed, and launched himself at the Friend in a flurry of kicking feet and clenched fists. At once he found himself suspended a foot off the floor with the waistband of his pants tight in a grip like a crane’s.
To Lorna the Friend said, “All you’re requested to do is thumbprint the acceptance box and fax the datum back to the rental company. That is, if you do agree to accept me.”
She looked at it, and her son, for a long moment, and then firmly planted her thumb on the reverse of the label.
“Thank you. Now, Tim!” The Friend swivelled him around so that it could look directly at him. “I’m sorry to see how dirty you are. It’s not the way one would wish to find a friend. I shall give you a bath and a change of clothes.”
“I had a bath!” Tim howled, flailing arms and legs impotently.
Ignoring him, the Friend continued, “Mrs Patterson, if you’ll kindly show me where Tim’s clothes are kept, I’ll attend to the matter right away.”
A slow smile spread over Lorna’s face. “You know something?” she said to the air. “I guess that counsellor was on the right track after all. Come this way—uh . . . Say! What do we call you?”
“It’s customary to have the young person I’m assigned to select a name for me.”
“If I know Tim,” Lorna said, “he’ll pick on something so filthy it can’t be used in company!”
Tim stopped screaming for a moment. That was an idea which hadn’t occurred to him.
“But,” Lorna declared, “we’ll avoid that, and just call you Buddy right from the start. Is that okay?”
“I shall memorise the datum at once. Come along, Tim!”
“Well, I guess
