Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi Page A

green. I learned that Yherajk-to-Yherajk communication most often took the form of complex pheromone “ideographs” launched into the air or passed on through touch: the “speaker” was identified with an identifier molecule—his own personal smell. Joshua learned that I preferred Eurotrash dance music to American guitar rock and roll.
    At the end of it, I knew more about the Yherajk than any other person on the planet, and Joshua knew more about me than any other person on the planet. I ended up thinking that Joshua had somehow gotten the better end of that bargain; there was only one other person who knew about Joshua, after all. But presumably a lot of other people knew about me.
    Only one question remained unanswered: how Joshua got his name. He refused to tell me.
    â€œThat’s not fair,” I said. “You said no lying or evading.”
    â€œThis is the exception that proves the rule,” Joshua said.
“Besides, it’s not my story to tell. You need to ask Carl how it came about. Now,” he executed a maneuver that looked very much like a stretch after a long bout of sitting, “where is that computer of yours? I need to sign in. I want to see how much spam I have.”
    I led him to my home office, where my computer was; he slithered onto the seat, glopped himself onto the keyboard, and shot out a tendril to the mouse. I was mildly worried that parts of him might get stuck in my keyboard. But when he moved from the table on the way to the office, he didn’t leave any slime trails. Chalk one up for my upholstery. I figured my keyboard would be okay. I left him to clack away online and headed out to the back porch.
    My backyard was sloped up into the mountainside and heavily wooded in the back. It was on slightly higher ground than the adjoining houses’ backyards—something I appreciated greatly when I was thirteen and Trish Escobedo next door would lay out next to her pool. I settled into my usual chair, which looked out onto the Escobedo backyard—Trish was now married and hadn’t lived there for nearly twelve years, but old habits died hard. On the way out, I had pulled a beer from the fridge; I twisted off the top and sat back to look up at the stars.
    I was thinking about Joshua and the Yherajk. Joshua was an immediate problem—very smart, very amusing, very liquid, and, I was beginning to suspect, very prone to boredom. I was giving him a week before he went off his rocker in the house. I was going to have to figure some way of getting him out of the house on an occasional basis; I didn’t know what a bored Yherajk was like but I didn’t aim to find out. Priority one: field trips for Joshua.

    The Yherajk were a less immediate but infinitely more complicated problem—alien globs who want to befriend a humanity that, if asked, would probably prefer to be befriended by something with an endoskeleton. The only thing that possibly could have been worse was if the Yherajk looked like giant bugs: that would have turned the half of humanity already afraid of spiders and roaches into insane gibbering messes. Maybe that was the way to go: “The Yherajk—At Least They’re Not Insects.” I glanced back up at the stars and wondered idly if one of them was the Yherajk asteroid ship.
    I heard a scratching at the side gate. I went over to unlatch it; Ralph, the World’s Oldest Retriever, was on the other side, huffing slightly. His tail was wagging feebly and he was looking up at me with a tired doggie grin as if to say, I got out again. Not bad for an old fart.
    I liked Ralph. The youngest Escobedo kid, Richie, had graduated from college and moved out about two years ago, and I suspected since then Ralph didn’t get that much notice; Esteban, who owned a mainframe software company, didn’t have the time, and anyone could tell that Mary just wasn’t a dog person. He was fed but ignored.
    Richie used to drop by every