It’s his first professional fiction sale, so perhaps that makes it all right.

  “How was your flight from Glasgow, Mister . . .”

  “McLochlan. Nestor McLochlan,” the enormous, scaly, kilt-clad visitor replied, handing the customs officer his passport. “Nessie to me friends. The flight ’twas bonny, save that some haggis-brained American bairn kept bashin’ me o’er the head wi’ a pillow an’ chantin’, ‘Na the Momma! Na the Momma!”

  The customs officer shook her blonde head. “Those Americans.” She ran the passport under a scanner. “Purpose of your visit?”

  “Vacation. Relax, play a wee bit o’ golf, get some sun. Ye canna’ know what a treat ’tis for a cold-blooded individual t’ lie in the sun!” He took off his hat and sunglasses as he answered. “I’ve had it wi’ the rain, the fog, the annoyin’ wee fish and their annoyin’ wee fish comments, the paparazzi scullin’ around the Loch in their rent’d coracles, cameras a-clickin’. I need a break, lassie, a chance to go somewhere and be a tourist, instead of a bloody tourist attraction.”

  The customs officer glanced up from the form she’d been filling in. “Yeah. Vacation. Right.” She squinted at the passport, then said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, this is a terrible picture of you. It’s out of focus, kind of misty and indistinct. Why, it could be a bunch of floating logs, or a pile of seaweed. Almost anything.”

  “I dinna photograph verra well,” he told her. “I’ve ne’er seen a clear photograph o’ me’self what wasn’t a hoax, perpetrated by charlatans to beguile the gullible.”

  “Well, we can’t all be photogenic,” the customs officer replied, flashing a puzzled smile. She stamped the passport and returned it. “Welcome to Bermuda, Mister McLochlan.” She did a double take. “Say, aren’t you . . . Dino, from The Flintstones? My children love that show! Especially the way you always went ‘Yip! Yip! Yip!’ when Fred came home! Could you do ‘the Dino bark’ for me? Just one Yip? Please?”

  “No. Sorry. Lar’ngitis,” he thundered over his shoulder, jogging for the exit.

  A group of Japanese tourists began pointing at Nessie and whispering excitedly to each other. He paused, pivoted to face them, and began, “I pray ye, dinna tell anyone ye have recogniz’d me! I’ll get nary a moment’s rest, if word gets oot.”

  As one, the tourists turned and ran, screaming, “Godzirra! Godzirra!”

  Bewildered, Nessie grabbed his bags and jumped onto the hotel shuttle.

  The overweight, balding desk clerk at the Atlantis Hotel handed Nessie a key. “We’ve prepared our best suite for you, Mister McLochlan,” he said, then leaned close and whispered, “You can trust our staff to be discreet, sir. Many celebrities come here under assumed identities to unwind.” He winked, then rang for a bellhop. Nessie smiled. Now this was more like it!

  The Elvis Presley Suite was impressive, including seven televisions and a loaded revolver. Nessie tipped the bellhop, but the boy seemed reluctant to leave. “Aye, laddie?” Nessie rumbled.

  The bellhop looked down at his hands. “Well, sir, it’s against hotel policy, but, uh, could I have your autograph?”

  Nessie rolled his pool ball-size eyes and reached for a pad of Atlantis stationery. “Ach, the obligations what come wi’ bein’ a celebrity!”

  The bellhop fairly vibrated in place. “I always loved your show. Wait till my family hears that I actually met Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent! Are you still friends with Beanie, or is it true you two had a falling out?”

  Quickly, Nessie scribbled ‘To a fellow with a brain the size of a walnut, sincerely, Cecil’ on the pad, shoved it into the boy’s hands, and shoved him out the door.

  Nessie needed a drink. He exchanged his kilt for a pair of baggy tartan shorts and headed down to the bistro overlooking the hotel’s pool.

  Seating himself around an outdoor table, Nessie ordered a Scotch and water. The waiter returned with the drink, his beaded dreadlocks swinging as he walked. “What else can I be gettin’ ja, mon?” he said. “Would ja like to be trying some sushi, mon? We make it fresh here, ja know.”

  “I dinna think so,” Nessie said, sipping his drink. “I came here to ge’ away from fish! Bring me a Caesar salad, please.”

  The waiter returned a few minutes later with the salad. He cocked his head to one side and said, “Don’ I be knowin’ ja from somewheres, mon?”

  “I dinna think so, laddie.”

  “Sure, mon, ja be the Crocodile from Peter Pon. So, tell me, mon, what do a Pirate’s hand taste like?”

  “Ye’re lucky I’m an herbivore, laddie,” Nessie growled, briefly wondering what a waiter’s hand might taste like.

  Nessie hurriedly finished the salad, gulped his drink, and made his way to the pool. He stretched himself across several lounge chairs.

  As he lay there, feeling warm and dry for the first time in about a hundred years, he noticed a pretty, freckled woman with red hair eyeing him. She got up from her deck chair, careful not to disturb the two plaid-suited goons snoring on either side, and made her way over. “Excuse me,” she began, “But aren’t you. . .”

  “No!” Nessie thundered. “I am na’ a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turt’l, nor am I Earl Sinclair, Barney the Dinosaur, nor any oth’r cute, friendly character from American television! I canna’ get ye discount tickets to Dinosaurs Alive! I am . . .”

  “The mysterious and terrifying Loch Ness Monster,” she said quietly.

  Nessie’s rather prodigious eyes bulged, then he smiled. “That I am, lassie.”

  “You’re much more handsome than I’d realized from the pictures.”

  “Ach, I dinna photograph verra well.”

  She smiled, showing some very pleasant dimples. “I sometimes wish I could say the same.” Again the dimples. “But you’re going to bum if you don’t get some sunscreen on that lovely, scaly hide of yours, Mister Ness.”

  “Call me Nessie, if ya like.”

  “Nessie, then. And I’m Sarah.”

  As Sarah reached for the sunscreen, Nessie noticed a paparazzi’s camera peeping at them from out of the bushes. Shooting the photographer his most threatening, aweinspiring, ear-to-ear grin, Nessie leaned back to enjoy Sarah’s ministrations, thinking, Ach! The obligations what come wi’ bein’ a celebrity! ’Tis a shame his pictures will be blurry.

  Duchess of Windsor Photographed in Poolside Romp! Fergie Snapped Rubbing Sunblock on Mystery Figure in Bermuda!

  Racehorse Predicts the Future!

  by Josephs Sherman

  Josepha Sherman’s books include A Strange and Ancient Name, Castle of Deception (co-written with Mercedes Lackey), A Sampler of Jewish-American Folklore, Windleaf, Rachel the Clever, and Child of Faerie, Child of Earth. She has also sold over ninety short stories and articles.

  A charter member of the Editorial Horseplayers’ Association (board meetings are held at Belmont Racetrack), she has yet to hear a horse accurately predict the future.

  Maybe at Aqueduct . . .?

  It was all the alien’s fault. I mean, I hadn’t done anything so terrible, just borrowed a little money from the company. It was such a miserably run business no one ever noticed the cash was gone. And it wasn’t as though I wasn’t going to pay it back!

  It wasn’t as though I didn’t have a good reason for what I’d done, either. After all, when you’ve been scraping along for years, aching to own your own thoroughbred—hell, your own racing stable!—and yet being stuck with the only horses you can afford, cheap claimers, the sort that’ll go bad if you just look at them the wrong way, you’d jump at the chance to buy a really good colt, wouldn’t you? Even if it meant bending the law just a little.

  Anyhow, thanks to that . . . well, let’s call it a loan, I found myself, for the first time in my life, the proud owner of a real racehorse, Sunny Boy, three-year-old winner of his first two starts. Yeah, they’d been allowance races, in nobody-much company, but he’d shown promise. And damned if he wasn’t going off as second favorite in his first attempt in stakes company.

  So far so good, right? But the day before the race things got weird. There I was, hanging on Sunny Boy’s stall like any other hopeful owner, staring at the colt, which wasn’t returning the favor.

  Then all at once his ears shot up and he turned to stare at me.

  And so help me, Sunny Boy spoke.

  “You are the human who owns this beast?”

  It wasn’t a trick. There wasn’t anyone around who could have been casting his voice or whatever they call it. And the colt’s lips had moved, just like some all too real remake of Mr. Ed! His voice had sounded just as funny as you’d expect; a horse isn’t made to speak human. But I’d understood him.

  “Uh. . . yeah,” I said, very carefully. “Sunny Boy . . .?”

  “No, no, no, you miss the point! I am not this beast, I am in this beast!”

  Oh, great! My first shot at a good horse, and it turned out to be possessed! “Wh-what are you?” I stammered, wondering how you got a horse exorcised. “Some kind of demon?”

  “No, you foolish human, I am an alien!”

  “From outer space?”

  “Of course from outer space, you threznit! I am . . . what you would call an explorer.”

  “Oh. Sure. Where’s your saucer?”

  “Saucer . . .?”

  The voice was cut off as Sunny Boy calmly snatched a mouthful of hay. Apparently not minding being inhabited, he stood chewing for what seemed an endless while.

  “Come on, horse!” I told him. “Swallow!”

  Sunny Boy wasn’t impressed. He finally did swallow, but then took a leisurely drink of water. At last he raised his head from the water bucket and the alien was able to continue:

  “By ‘saucer,’ you mean a space vehicle? Yes? I didn’t come here in a vehicle. Such things are far too slow and expensive. No, when I explore, I send my . . . call it my consciousness out across time and space, and take up residence in an intelligent host so I may make observations.”

  “Sunny Boy is intelligent?”

  The alien sighed. “Hardly. This animal has but three thoughts in its mind: running, eating and . . . and something else.”

  I could have sworn the voice was blushing. “Something else?” I asked, and light dawned. “You mean sex? Hell, I should hope so!” The average three-year-old colt has the sex drive of your average healthy teenager. And with any luck, Sunny Boy had a productive stud career ahead of him once he was done with racing. “Never mind that. If you were trying to land in an intelligent . . . uh . . . host, how did you—”

  “I made a mistake! Strong, basic emotion interferes with the process. And this animal was—well he was—”

  Just then a handler went by, leading a sleek young filly. Sunny Boy let out a downright lascivious whinny and kicked at his stall till she was out of sight.

  “You see?” The alien voice sounded very weary.

  I snickered. “I get the picture! You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this sex-mad equine dragged you right in.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And every time the colt gets a horny thought in his head he scrambles your thoughts, right?”

  “More or less. Worse, the longer I am stuck in here, the more difficult it becomes for me to escape. I do not wish to end up as part of an animal’s mind! Human, you must help me!”

  But my own mind was racing like a sprinter. “First you’ve got to tell me more about yourself. I mean, if you can travel through space like that, you’ve got to have all sorts of weird mind tricks.”

  The alien paused. Sunny Boy blinked thoughtfully at me. “You humans would think so, yes.”

  “Like what?”

  You ever see a horse shrug? “I can tap into the mental patterns of others’ thoughts—”

  “You can read minds?”

  “Not without permission! It just isn’t polite.”

  “Oh. Right.” A courteous alien. What next? “What else can you do?”

  “I can foresee the outcome of certain events that—”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying you can predict the future?”

  “Only to a limited extent.” The alien sighed. “Being stuck inside this beast means I can only see what he and his fellows are going to do within a short time-frame.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said with true reverence. “You can predict races.”

  “The outcome of those running contests. Oh, easily. But what—”

  “Look, I’ll help you, honest. But—but you’ve got to help me first. First of all, you can’t let anyone else know you’re here. We . . . uh . . . we’re a very suspicious race, and if you say anything to anyone but me, they might try to. . . uh . . . destroy you.”

  Would he buy that? It seemed like something out of a bad SF movie to me, but then I wasn’t some alien explorer stuck in a horse’s mind!

  “I—I see!” the alien gasped. “I had no idea this was such a perilous world! Thank you, human. You are a true friend.”

  “Sure. Now, about this race-predicting thing . . .”

  Well, he might have come from the across the galaxy, but my alien friend wasn’t too bright about some things. Like the idea of money. I had to concoct a story about the gathering of cash being part of a religious rite I had to fulfill (hell, that wasn’t so far wrong!). Until that rite was completed, I told him, I couldn’t possibly help him escape. And the best way to accumulate that sacred green . . .

  He really could predict the outcome of the races. Sunny Boy never did quite manage to win a stakes race, but thanks to my alien tout’s tips, I started cleaning up at the track on other horses.

  After a while, though, the thrill wore off just a bit. I found myself thinking after every win that I had enough now, I had better set about repaying that “loan” before someone thought to try balancing the books. And I really should help the alien find a way out of Sunny Boy’s mind before it was too late. But . . . well . . . you know how it goes.

  And then one day it all started to fall apart. As I went up to Sonny Boy’s stall, the alien whispered:

  “You said you’d help me!”

  “I will.”

  “When? I can’t wait much longer! Every day I start thinking more like a horse . . . and I . . . it . . . I am starting to enjoy it!” Sunny Boy shook himself vigorously. “You’ve got to get me out of here!”

  “I said I will. When . . . uh . . . when the time is right.”

  “I can’t wait for the time to be right!” Sunny Boy pinned his ears and glared at me. “You—you’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? You can’t help me!”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Shh! Someone’s going to hear you.”

  “I no longer care! If you will not tell me the truth, I will learn it for myself!”

  Before I could move, I felt a cold little something winding its way into my mind. Just as quickly it was gone, and the alien was gasping, “So! Not only are you a liar, you are a thief as well! A stealer of the sacred cash! Did it not matter to you that without that cash this company you robbed will fail?”

  I muttered something about stupid business deals and if they couldn’t manage their money, they didn’t deserve to keep it. But the alien wasn’t buying any of that.

  “And you’ve been using me to help you steal still more!” he shrilled. “Well, the thieving ends now!”

  “I told you to keep it down! They—”

  “I no longer care if others hear me! Someone must learn you are a thief! Help! Somebody, help!”

  Well, what could I do? Fortunately, mares do come into heat regularly, even at the track, and fortunately there was just such a mare being walked nearby. No one saw me slip the bolt on Sunny Boy’s stall—and no one had to tell Sunny Boy what to do with his freedom! A mental cry rang in my head:

  “No! You can’t do this!”

  “Sorry, pal. I’ve already done it.”

  Judging from the rush of emotion Sunny Boy and the mare were releasing, I’d heard the last of my alien friend. Too bad! But I’d already gotten a good amount of cash out of this whole business. And he . . . well, maybe he’d enjoy being part of a stallion’s mind!

  I heard one last, despairing mental shout:

  “Traitor! Thief! I’ll get you for this!”

  Then there was silence, save for the happy squealings of two oversexed horses.

  Well, you can imagine the threats of suits and countersuits that followed, particularly since the mare turned up pregnant after her brief fling. But nobody could prove that fling had been anything but an accident. Besides, the mare wasn’t exactly a world-beater. She’d been at the end of her not very distinguished racing career anyhow. And even if Sunny Boy wasn’t a world-beater either, his breeding was nice enough, and pretty close to that of the stallion her owner had had in mind for her first mating. After he’d thought it over a little, said owner agreed he didn’t mind saving on stud fees.

  And it didn’t hurt either of us that the man was enough of a realist to play up that “trackside romance” for all the publicity it was worth. Eleven months later, he even invited me and a whole slew of reporters to see the birth of Sunny Boy’s first foal.

  Of course I went. Why not? I didn’t have anything to fear from reporters. The company I had “borrowed” from had quietly gone bankrupt, just as my alien pal had announced, and at this stage of the game it didn’t look like anyone was ever going to uncover my little “loan.” After all, aside from the alien, who knew about it? And the alien was long gone.

  Mares foal quickly. Soon Sunny Boy’s first offspring was lying sprawled on the straw, being licked dry by his loving mamma. As we watched and the reporters’ cameras whirred, the foal struggled to his long, awkward legs. He took a good, long drink of mare’s milk.

  Then all at once the foal tensed. His ears shot up and he turned to stare at me.