Little green men, p.16
Little Green Men, page 16
"Benefits?"
"Many."
"Medical?"
"Major."
"Vacations?"
"Frequent."
"So." She smiled, taking his hand. "Do I apply for this position in person?"
"Urn. You do have to pass a physical exam first."
"What sort of physical?"
"Pretty rigorous, from what I hear."
"I'll. . . think about it."
Submerged up to his crotch in the frigid Potomac River, Scrubbs hid behind a large rock on the eastern bank of the island, directly across from the Kennedy Center. Early-morning commuters were driving in to work. He was hiding from assassins. Another day, another dollar.
They were getting closer. Soon, he guessed, the police helicopter would appear. An amplified voice would bark at him to put his hands in the air. The rest was predictable. He would be taken into custody. In the car he would feel the jab of a hypodermic needle. Or perhaps they'd use sevoflurane on him, straight, without the ammonia and cinnamon flavoring. He would fall into a deep, untroubled sleep for, oh, ever.
He peered over the top of the rock. They were a hundred feet away and closing on him, sweeping the bank, guns at the ready.
The river was cold and dirty, but it beat getting shot. Scrubbs slipped in, gasping, up to his neck, and pushed out until he felt the current start to carry him downriver. It was swift.
As he was passing the southern tip of Theodore Roosevelt Island, moving swiftly now toward God knew where, he saw a fishing boat, about fifteen feet long, anchored in the lee of the island. A number of fishing rods were deployed in holders. A man was sitting in the boat, leaning back. He appeared to be asleep. Scrubbs began to drift toward the lines. He tried to kick away, but the current was drawing him in.
Fifty feet past the boat, he felt a sharp pain in his leg.
In the distance, he heard the distinctive and normally cheering zzzzzzzzzzz of unspooling fishing line.
The pain in his leg – ahh! He thrashed against the current, trying to reach the boat. The fisherman was now standing, holding his rod.
With enormous effort, Scrubbs reached the boat. He grabbed the transom, spat water. "Morning," he said.
The fisherman was a black man in his early sixties, roly-poly in the belly, with a finely trimmed mustache. At the moment, however, his most prominent feature was his mouth, which was hanging open.
Scrubbs coughed up more Potomac water. "Sorry to disturb you, but your line hooked my leg."
"What," the man said, "are you doing in the water?"
Scrubbs was too tired for invention. "There are some men with guns on the island trying to kill me."
"Police?"
"Sort of. Not really." "Well, which is it?"
"They're with the government." Scrubbs gasped from the exertion required to hold on. "They want to kill me because I know about flying saucers."
Well, there - the ball was now squarely in the man's court. "Mister, are you drunk!"
"No. They're going to see us any minute. Do you suppose you could pull in your anchor so maybe we could drift out of their range while we talk?"
"Oh, man ..."
Scrubbs sympathized. Here you come out on the river for a nice, peaceful early-morning bit of fishing, and you catch a man who tells you he's on the run from the UFO police. What would you do?
The man was shaking his head, as if trying to make Scrubbs vanish mentally. Just then the first shots zipped into the water a yard away.
"Sweet Jesus!" the man said. Quick as a flash he sliced the anchor line clean with a razor-sharp fillet knife and ducked under the gunwales. More shots were fired. Scrubbs heard one connect with the side of the boat, eliciting a "Damn!" from the crouching fisherman.
But the boat, borne by the current, was drifting rapidly away from the island, and in minutes they were under the Memorial Bridge and out of range.
"Thank you," Scrubbs spluttered. "Appreciate it." He was exhausted, frozen, and bleeding. He began to slip under. As his head went in, he felt arms pulling him into the boat.
Next thing he knew he was lying in the bottom of the boat, smelling gasoline and fish. Above him, he saw a 727 landing at Reagan National Airport.
The fisherman started the outboard. The boat buzzed south.
"Scrubbs," he said, wincing as he tried to pull the hook out of his thigh. "Nathan."
"Did I ask to know that? Do I want to know that?"
"You can drop me near the airport if you want."
The man shook his head again.
"Look at you," said the fisherman with a mixture of disgust and concern. "You're wet, stuck full of hooks. I've seen better looking road-kill. You're gonna get far."
"Ow!"
'And now you just sat on another of my seventy-nine-cent triple hooks. I'm going to have to ruin that hook to get it out of you. Plus you're sitting on my fish. Nothin' much going right for you today. Now what's this you telling me, about UFO's?"
"The government is afraid of what I know about UFO's." No sense in hitting him with the entire history of MJ-12 at this hour of the morning.
"Hm." The man snorted. "You from Saint Lizbeth's?"
"No. I know this must sound strange."
"It does."
"I'm too tired to lie."
"Hm." But it was a gentler hm.
"I seen a UFO once. In the Chesapeake Bay. Three of 'em. One red, one blue, one sorta yellow. Crisscrossing like fireflies, except they weren't no bugs. I could see that. Know what I'm saying?"
"1 do."
"1 told my wife about it, and she said, 'You been drinking.' 1 said the only drinking that was going on was in those UFO's, from the way they were driving. Never seen such a thing. Never have since."
He was warming to the subject. "What I don't get is - if they so damn intelligent to come all the way here from wherever it is, how come they don't just set down on the president's lawn over there like they do in the movies and say, 'Okay, we're here. Deal with the situation.' Know what I'm saying? Make a hell of lot more sense than drunk drivin' over the Chesapeake. What is that supposed to prove? That they're intelligent! If that's all they got to do, they aren't no more intelligent than humans." He stared at Scrubbs. "But they may be one up on you."
"Don't doubt that."
"Do you have money?"
"I'll give you what I've got. It's not much."
"I didn't say I want your money, did I? There's easier ways of making money than catching fugitives in the Potomac."
He shook his head again. He seemed to be trying to reach a decision. Scrubbs knew that much depended on whatever it was.
Suddenly the man turned the outboard throttle to the right, angling the boat east, away from the airport.
"Where we going?" Scrubbs asked.
"We are going to get you some dry clothes. Then we'll see about getting you some running money." "Thank you," Scrubbs said.
"Don’t think you're getting something for nothing. So you know about UFO's. Do you know about hanging Sheetrock?" "Huh?"
"Well, you going to learn about Sheetrock."
TWELVE
Heads turned as Banion and Roz strode through the stony corridors of the U.S. Capitol. Roz's heels clickety-clicked with executive staccato.
A few courageous souls greeted Banion with brief handshakes. Most gave fleeting glances and noncommittal nods of recognition and hurried on, despite their curiosity over why Mr. UFO was now prowling the halls of Congress. What on earth did he want here?
He was a celebrity again, but of quite a different sort. Saturday had become the number 11 show in the country. TV Guide had put him on its cover, dubbing him Mr. Millennium. In New York and Los Angeles, TV networks were holding meetings to explore how quickly they might mount their own UFO-related talk shows. Meanwhile. Gooey-Lube was lubricating as fast as it could. Millions of American automobiles hummed frictionlessly along the highways.
In the newspapers, pundits and critics were scratching their heads over the show's success. One Times columnist, quoting heavily from Yeats's "Second Coming" - things falling apart, the center not holding, mere anarchy being loosed upon the world, etc. - called it "ultimate PMS - PreMillennial Syndrome." The news sections of the papers showed that, indeed, the country was having difficulty adjusting to the new time zone. More nutty cultists were taking the plunge. Most recently, three dozen people, convinced by their leader that apocalypse was imminent, had committed mass suicide by holding hands and leaping off one of the more popular tourist vistas in the Grand Canyon, creating a nasty cleanup job for the poor Park Service. (The cult's leader decided at the last minute not to take the plunge and was later arrested in the first-class lounge of the Phoenix airport.) Everywhere, fundamentalist preachers were discerning portents that God's patience with mankind's villainy was finally exhausted; the only question was, what form would His wrath assume? A murderous, tsunami-causing asteroid? Massive volcanic eruptions ushering in permanent atmospheric winter? Or did He have something more . . . lurid up His sleeve, some pestilence, perhaps, that would make the biblical plague of boils look like a mere case of teenage zits? It didn't help that Southern California chose this moment to have one of its semi-spectacular earthquakes.
"Shouldn't we have called him to ask for an appointment?" Roz said.
"He wouldn't have given us one if we had," Banion said. "And this will give us the element of surprise." A senator he knew well pretended not to notice Banion as he breezed by.
"They used to hurl themselves at me when I came here, all of them begging to be on the show. Now look at them, rats. Scurrying."
They had arrived at a doorway with a proud, unambiguous sign above proclaiming SENATORS ONLY.
"This is where they put their coats?" Roz asked.
"It's just called the Cloakroom. They used to hang their cloaks there. It's where they hang out and devise ways of thwarting the will of the people. Where they discuss their deals. Their little deals."
"You're Mr. Banion, aren't you?" It was a uniformed Capitol Hill policeman.
"Yes," Banion preened.
"I saw your show on TV. The one with that lady who takes pictures of cows with the - that was nasty."
"It's a nasty situation."
"What they ought to do is take all those hamburgers that are making people sick, and feed them to the aliens."
"I'll pass that suggestion along. We're looking for Senator Gracklesen."
"He's on the floor. They're voting."
Banion and Roz stood awkwardly outside the Senate Cloakroom while people came and went, giving Banion surprised looks.
"I feel like a lobbyist," Roz said. "I've never met a senator before. A congressman once made a pass at me."
"We'll use you as bait. When Gracklesen comes out, undress and hurl yourself at him."
"Is he going to talk to us?"
"I doubt it. But I want to be able to say on the show that I gave him every chance. Before" - Banion grinned evilly - "I ruin his life."
"Why is everyone going to drop everything and march on Washington? Not that you aren't persuasive. I mean, here I am." True enough, Roz had given up her job as editor of Cosmospolitan to become executive director of 4-A (Americans Against Alien Abductions). She had become indispensable to him, much to the jealous consternation of Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit. They spent all day with each other. If only, Banion yearned, she would spend the rest of the time with him. But despite the inklings he had that she was fond of him, Roz insisted that their relationship be strictly professional. He was hopelessly in love, but too correct to press the point. There were times when he wished he had not been brought up so well.
"They'll come," he said confidently. "Think about it. If they've got nothing better to do than watch television on Saturday mornings, they have time to spare a few days to come to Washington to scare the crap out of their elected representatives."
"Maybe. But wouldn't it be embarrassing to threaten Senator Gracklesen with all these barbarians at the gate and then have no one show up?"
"I have twenty-five million regular viewers. How many regular hitters are we getting on the web site?" "Four or five million."
"So thirty million. If half of one percent show up, that's a hundred and fifty thousand people. That's a lot of Porta Potties on the Mall. Why, hello, Senator."
"Jaack Baanion, you son of a gun! Lemme lookatcha!" Sen. Raysor Mentallius of Wyoming was. at age ninety-two, the eighth oldest member of the United States Senate, ancient, perhaps, but enormously influential by virtue of being chairman of the Senate Hindsight Committee, always referred to in the press as the "powerful Senate Hindsight Committee."* He and Banion went back many years. He had been a regular and, by virtue of his engaging, folksy manner, highly popular guest on Sunday with John Oliver Banion. In additional to his other charms, Senator Mentallius was a keen appreciator of feminine beauty, a trait he expressed by groping every woman he met. In the old days, this was of course standard practice among senators. In the era of political correctness it was not. but he managed to persist in his tactile enthusiasms by pretending to be functionally blind. His manual explorations of the opposite sex appeared to be nothing more than a harmless form of full-body Braille. The fact was that, in private, he read without glasses.
"They told me they put you in a loony bin!"
"They had to let me out." Banion smiled. "I made too much noise banging my cup against the bars."
* Established when it was determined that there were more committees than there are members of Congress.
"That's the way!" the senator said, embarking on a free-ranging, five-minute reminiscence of arguable relevance about his experiences in boot camp in the Army in the 1930s. He had taken part in the Normandy beach landings and could recite from memory the whole of the "Once more unto the breach" soliloquy from Henry V. Indeed, he frequently did recite it. During his famous filibuster in the early 1950s he had read aloud to the Senate the whole of Shakespeare. It took a while.
"And who is this dee-lightful creature?" he said, fastening Roz's upper arm in a bony death grip. Banion had to admire the man's Jurassic libido.
"This is Miss Well, my assistant."
"That's the way!" he winked.
"He means executive director," Roz said. "I'm pleased to meet you. Senator."
"Not half as pleased as I am to see you. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Roz blushed.
"Jack, don't you be selfish. You bring this majestic young lady to see me sometime, you hear? 1 will explain to her the ways and means of this august body. You been in the papers too much lately, Jack. You need anything? You all right?"
'As a matter of fact, I do. I need Hank Gracklesen."
Senator Mentallius snorted. "I've heard of higher aspirations than that." He turned his attention back to drooling over Roz. "I knew a Roz. Rosalind Russell. Actress. Fine woman. She paid me a visit. Must have been back in . . . where does the time go?"
"What I need," Banion pressed on. "falls under the purview of his committee. But he's in the middle of a vote."
"Then let's do you and the Republic a favor and get him off the floor." With that Senator Mentallius reached out and grabbed the ID neck chain of a passing aide, nearly strangling him in the process. The aide started to protest, until he realized who it was who was garroting him.
"Sir?" he said, rubbing his throat.
"Go in there and fetch Senator Gracklesen and bring him out here. Quick, now."
"But they"re voting on -"
"Just do it, son. I'm timing you with my watch here. You hurry. You bring him right here to me. You tell him I want to see him." The aide scurried off.
Senator Mentallius took Banion's hand warmly. "I'm tempted to stay just to see the look on his face, but I got to go meet with the Joint Chiefs. They're trying to talk me into giving them a coupla new aircraft carriers." He chuckled. "Now you come see me if they try to put you back in that loony bin, you hear?" He took Roz's hand. "Young lady, I expect to see more of you. Good-bye, now. Good-bye."
"Well," Banion said after he had gone, "now you've been groped by members of the lower and upper house."
"He's a piece of work," Roz said.
A few minutes later, Sen. Hank Gracklesen appeared in the doorway with a look of votus interruptus, accompanied by the fretful aide.
"What's the meaning of this?"
"I want abduction hearings, Hank."
A look of outrage spread like fire across the savanna of Senator Gracklesen's face. "Just who are you to pull me off the floor in the middle of a vote and make demands?"
"A taxpayer?" Banion said.
"I'm going back in there."
"With a hit TV show and twenty-five million viewers." "Bully for you."
'And I'm going to tell them to march on Washington if you don't hold hearings."
Senator Gracklesen's progress back to the floor was momentarily arrested. Banion could see the harried cogitations taking place inside the senatorial cerebrum: UFO convention .. . Revolt of the Mushrooms ... nothing happened, some mail, no big deal, bunch of losers grousing about being diddled by aliens ... a nutcase ... new TV show? ... about flying saucers? ... so what. . . he's bluffing.
A smile appeared on the legislative visage.
"Jack, I'm going to say something to you that I don't get many chances to say, as a United States senator - fuck off."
"Shall I put you down as undecided, leaning against?"
"Go away."
'All right, Hank, but don't say that you weren't warned."
Senator Gracklesen then reached out, took Roz's hand as if it belonged to an admiring constituent, shook it, and said, "Good to meet you, thanks for coming by."
'Are they all like that?" she said after he had stormed off.
"Let's see how he feels when he looks out his office window onto the Mall and sees a hundred and fifty thousand people chanting for his head."
Cigar-chomping Andy Crocanelli paced in a sweaty fret at the edge of the set.
"You can't smoke that in here," a technician said. "Do you know who I fucking am?" "No, who the fuck are you?"
'Andy." Banion said, sitting in his chair going over his notes. "Relax. It's going to be fine."
"Fine? The fucking lawyers say we could fucking get indicted for inciting violence."
