“Aimee, I have a very, very dumb question for you, so please be patient with me,” I said. “Aside from the fact that the producers aren’t using the original cast, what’s your problem with the new version of Beyond Earth?”
Ernie coughed and barked and made some choking sounds while waving his arms around.
The woman nodded in agreement with Mr. Snork and turned to me.
“They are changing everything,” she said. “They are turning the characters, and I quote, into ‘deeply flawed individuals.’ Captain Stryker wasn’t deeply flawed. He represented the very best of what it means to be human. They all did, even the aliens. But worst of all, they are turning Mr. Snork into a woman. Can you imagine that?”
“I assume you know by now that Conrad Stipe was murdered right outside that door.” Monk motioned to the nearby exit. “Did you hear or see anything unusual this morning? By that I mean, above and beyond the twisted behavior that’s occurring all around us at this very moment.”
Ernie grunted and gagged and heaved and gestured wildly with his hands.
“Does anyone here know the Heimlich maneuver?” Monk said. “This man is choking.”
Ernie stood up and gurgled and growled and coughed some more.
“He’s not choking,” Aimee said. “He’s speaking in Dratch.”
“Dratch?” Monk said. “What is that?”
She looked at Monk like he was a complete imbecile.
“Mr. Snork is a Dratch,” Willis Goldkin said, stepping out from his booth and approaching us. “Ernie here is speaking the language of their home-world. You can blame me for it.”
“You put him up to this?” Monk said.
Goldkin shook his head. “I wrote the episode where the crew visited a settlement of Dratch refugees. We were running a couple of minutes short, so I stuck in a pointless scene where Mr. Snork talked to his people in his native tongues.”
“Tongues?” Monk said.
“The Dratch have three tongues,” Aimee said. “One for catching insects, one for grooming themselves, and one for love. They speak with all three—hence the unique sound. It takes incredible skill for a human to speak it, but Ernie has achieved it.”
“It was gibberish that I wrote in a drunken stupor. I was too wasted to write a real scene with actual dialogue, ” Goldkin said. “We recorded it twice and laid it over the original track to create the unusual sound. If you’d told me back then that thirty years later some linguist would analyze those lines, write his thesis on it, and extrapolate that into an entire language, I would probably still be a drunk today.”
“Ernie has vowed to only speak in Dratch until either they do Beyond Earth right or cancel the current abomination,” Aimee said. “He’s doing it to show his solidarity with the character of Mr. Snork and the ideals that he represents.”
Ernie gesticulated wildly, made some guttural sounds, and spit on the floor. Monk recoiled.
“What’s Ernie saying?” Monk asked.
“If you want to understand him, and the values of Beyond Earth, learn Dratch,” Aimee said. “If everyone would do that, if we all just made the effort to learn how other people think, the world would be a much more peaceful and accepting place to live.”
“So by refusing to translate for us, you’re making a statement,” I said to her. “You want us to try to understand him and, by doing so, see the necessity of working hard to understand our fellow man.”
Aimee nodded proudly. “We’re living the values and the message of every episode of the original Beyond Earth.”
This prompted Ernie to gurgle and gag and bark like a sea otter.
Monk turned to Goldkin. “Do you know what he’s saying?”
“Hell no,” Goldkin said and reached for an enormous book on the dealer’s table. “But if you want to, you’re going to need this.”
Monk looked at the book and gasped. It was as if he’d stained his carpet all over again.
“What is it?” I asked.
I assumed the sticker price was an odd number, or the price tag was crooked, or the symmetry of the cover was out of whack.
He held the book up so I could see it.
The title of the book was The Dratch Dictionary: Words, Phrases, and Grammar of the Most Evolved Language in the Universe.
The author was Ambrose Monk.
“Sweet Mother of God,” Monk said. “My brother is one of them.”
10
Mr. Monk Is Thrown for a Loupe
Monk had had enough. He left the building.
I stuck around for a few more minutes and looked through some of the other nonfiction books on the dealer’s table. There were a lot of them, with titles like The Official Beyond Earth Episode Guide, The Beyond Earth Compendium, and even The Ultimate Book of Beyond Earth Facts.
Ambrose had written them all.
The good news was this meant that Monk wouldn’t have to return to the convention to learn more about the show. All he had to do was go home. When I told Monk that during the drive to the Belmont Hotel, it didn’t make him feel any better.
“I always knew my brother was mentally ill,” Monk said, “but I had no idea that he was a freak.”
“He’s not a freak, Mr. Monk.”
“Did you see what he wrote?” Monk exclaimed.
“What’s the difference between writing a book like Beyond Earth and an owner’s manual for a blender?”
“You don’t see people dressing up like blenders and speaking puree, do you?” Monk said. “It’s a good thing my brother never leaves the house—he’d be locked up.”
Monk glanced over his shoulder.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I’m making sure we aren’t being followed.”
“Why would anyone want to follow us?”
“Because they’re freaks, and freaks do freakish things,” Monk said. “I don’t
