The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Slizzers, by Jerome Bixby

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Title: The Slizzers

Author: Jerome Bixby

Release Date: October 10, 2010 [EBook #33850]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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 was
wrong; you'd enjoy associating with _slizzers_, so long as
you didn't know...._

_The Slizzers_

by JEROME BIXBY

* * * * *

[Illustration]

They're all around us. I'll call them the _slizzers_, because they
_sliz_ people. Lord only knows how long they've been on Earth, and how
many of them there are....

They're all around us, living with us. We are hardly ever aware of
their existence, because they can _make_ themselves look like us, and
do most of the time; and if they can look like us, there's really no
need for them to think like us, is there? People think and behave in
so many cockeyed ways, anyhow. Whenever a _slizzer_ fumbles a little
in his impersonation of a human being, and comes up with a puzzling
response, I suppose we just shrug and think. _He could use a good
psychiatrist._

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. They
need us, something like the way we'd need maple trees if it came to
the point where maple syrup was our only food. That's why we're in no
comic-book danger of being destroyed, any more than maple trees would
be, in the circumstances I just mentioned--or are, as things go. In a
sense, we're rather well-treated and helped along a bit ... the way we
care for maple trees.

But, sometimes a man here and there will be carele