Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The main trouble is that you'd never suspect anything waswrong;
you'd enjoy associating with slizzers, so long as you didn't know....
The Slizzers
by JEROME BIXBY
hey're all around us. I'll call them the slizzers, because theysliz people. Lord only knows how long they've been on Earth, and howmany of them there are....
They're all around us, living with us. We are hardly ever aware oftheir existence, because they can make themselves look like us, anddo most of the time; and if they can look like us, there's really noneed for them to think like us, is there? People think and behave inso many cockeyed ways, anyhow. Whenever a slizzer fumbles a littlein his impersonation of a human being, and comes up with a puzzlingresponse, I suppose we just shrug and think. He could use a goodpsychiatrist.
So ... you might be one. Or your best friend, or your wife or husband,or that nice lady next door.
They aren't killers, or rampaging monsters; quite the contrary. Theyneed us, something like the way we'd need maple trees if it came tothe point where maple syrup was our only food. That's why we're in nocomic-book danger of being destroyed, any more than maple trees wouldbe, in the circumstances I just mentioned—or are, as things go. In asense, we're rather well-treated and helped along a bit ... the way wecare for maple trees.
But, sometimes a man here and there will be careless, or ignorant, orgreedy ... and a maple tree will be hurt....
Think about that the next time someone is real nice to you. He may bea slizzer ... and a careless one....
How long do we live?
Right. About sixty, seventy years.
You probably don't think much about that, because that's just the waythings are. That's life. And what the hell, the doctors are increasingour lifespan every day with new drugs and things, aren't they?
Sure.
But perhaps we'd live to be about a thousand, if the slizzers leftus alone.
Ever stop to think how little we know about why we live? ... what itis that takes our structure of bones and coldcuts and gives it thefunction we call "life?"
Some mysterious life-substance or force the doctors haven't pinneddown yet, you say—and that's as good a definition as any.
Well, we're maple trees to the slizzers, and that life-stuff is thesap we supply them. They do it mostly when we're feeling good—feelingreally terrific. It's easier to tap us that way, and there's more tobe had. (Maybe that's what makes so-called manic-depressives ... theyattract slizzers when they feel tip-top; the slizzers feed; andfloo-o-m ... depressive.)
Like I say, think about all this next time someone treats you justginger-peachy, and makes you feel all warm inside.
So see how long that feeling lasts ... and who is hanging around youat the time. Experiment. See if