Little green men, p.20
Little Green Men, page 20
Colonel Murfletit reported on his progress. The stage was being erected at the head of the Mall, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. It would make a splendid backdrop. The stage itself was in the shape of a large flying saucer, with a Plexiglas dome suspended overhead like a giant cockpit canopy. Huge speakers would broadcast cosmically themed music, the soundtracks from Star Wars, Star Trek, 2001, The Day the Earth Stood Still, My Favorite Martian, and other classics.
"Is it going to be finished in time?" Banion asked. Colonel Murfletit gave a weary nod. He might be a bit of an odd duck, Banion thought, but the Army got the job done.
Kathy Carr, who until Banion's abduction had been the nation's leading abductee, would kick off the Friday-night program by singing the national anthem. It had taken a lot of stroking on Falopian's part to get her. She chafed at no longer being number one.
"Do we know" - Banion rubbed his temples - "if she can sing?" The entertainment committee chair said she could probably get through it without making people wince. She said Kathy wanted to substitute some lyrics: "saucers flying through air" for "bombs bursting in air."
"No. no, no, no, no." Banion said, "we do not rewrite the national anthem. Please make that pellucidly clear to Ms. Carr. We are gathering as patriotic Americans petitioning our elected representatives. If I hear her sing one word I don't recognize, I'm going to cut off her microphone."
Fina Delmar, Hollywood star, would then welcome the assembled. Renira, in her cherished capacity as liaison to Miss Delmar, said that the actress would make brief remarks about how her abduction had changed her life.
"Brief, please," Banion said. "No endless reminiscences about everyone being pushed in Darryl Zanuck's pool." "It was Jack Warner's swimming pool."
"Whatever. Okay, what's next?" He looked at the lineup. "Tall Nordic Singers. What are they going to sing?"
"We Are the World," the entertainment chair said. They'd been rehearsing all week. It promised to be very moving. Later in the program they would come back on and do a haunting vocal accompaniment to "The Ice Forests of Orion." That would be even more moving, she promised.
Next, Dr. Falopian would speak. Glancing over at his crazed-looking colleague, Banion could only hope that the good doctor would shave, comb his hair, and wipe away the blanket of sugar on his belly before standing up to address a crowd that was now estimated at over 2 million, to say nothing of a live television audience expected to be in the hundreds of millions.
"What themes will you be striking, Danton?" Banion cautiously inquired.
Dr. Falopian went into a long, not altogether linear tirade about the U.S. government's evil connivance in this new form of slave trade. Banion collegially urged him to try to keep it to five minutes. We have a long program, folks.
Next was Darth Brooks, the Grammy-winning sci fi/country-western singer. He would sing his golden oldie, "Momma Don't Go with Little Green Men" - always a crowd pleaser, then his popular sing-along number 'Ammonia and Cinnamon."
Next would come the film. It was a documentary featuring an actual alien named Freepo. It was controversial even within the UFO community. In it, Freepo declared that he had met with top U.S. government political and military leaders to warn them about El Nino's impact on global weather patterns and that they had ignored his warnings entirely. After watching a rough version of it, Banion pointed out that Freepo had a pronounced southern accent. Dr. Falopian, who staunchly championed the film, argued that Freepo hailed from the Ulnar-5P galaxy, where vocal patterns were, in fact -how astute of Banion to point it out - remarkably similar to those of the U.S. rural South. He insisted that they show it. Finally, he said, we have one of them on tape! The footage was too hot to hold - why wait until after it had appeared on Tales of the Weird! Banion was too tired to argue, but he did put the kibosh on the revolting cattle mutilation video they wanted to show.
Colonel Murfletit would speak next. He would describe how he had been personally ordered by shadowy Pentagon brass to change the fluid in the tanks where the alien corpses from Roswell were preserved, not a pretty story either. Banion urged him not to dwell in too great length on the details. His headache throbbed.
Much discussion had been given to who should introduce Banion. Murfletit and Falopian had both been jockeying Fiercely for the honor. Yet Banion felt - without putting it directly - that it should be someone of greater, well, stature. He had settled finally on Romulus Valk.
Dr. Valk was the father of the halogen bomb, whose development had changed the course of the Cold War. The halogen weapon had so alarmed President John F. Kennedy that he had Dr. Valk himself classified, causing the dwarfish, beetle-browed Czech emigre no little inconvenience. He was finally declassified by President Nixon, enabling him to use credit cards and telephones and other services Americans take for granted. Nixon and Kissinger consulted with him regularly on how to scare the shit out of other countries.
Valk had come late to the belief that dared not speak its name. One day, looking out his office window at the Valk Institute in Ojo, California, while calculating how many halotons it would take to incinerate the Chelyabinsk Red Army base, he saw funny, blinking lights, and that was it, he never looked back. Unfortunately, his health was now far from robust. He was in his late eighties and had a tendency, in conversation, to begin speaking in Czech. Banion earnestly hoped that Dr. Valk would not lapse into his natal tongue halfway through his introduction.
"Should we have a translator standing by, just in case?" Elspeth suggested.
"Excellent idea, Elspeth," Banion said. "All right, then I come on. I'll speak for fifteen minutes, max. I'll try to get the chant going. How does it go again?"
"Wee-ooo, wee-ooo, how much does the government know?"
"Right. Okay, then the Tall Nordic Singers come on, and we'll segue right to the fireworks. How are we coming with the fireworks permits?"
They were working on it. The Park Service, cheesed about having been overruled on the march, was being pissy about certain details, such as the possibility of undetonated ordnance landing on concentrated masses of people, or on the White House for that matter.
"Okay" - Banion yawned - "let's quickly run through Saturday's program."
It was almost three in the morning by the time he got home. He had just thrown himself onto the bed, too tired even to take off his clothes and get under the covers, when the phone rang.
"Yes?" he growled. It had better not be Falopian or Murfletit, trying to persuade him again to turn the march into a sit-in surrounding the Congress. The maniacs wanted to turn it into Bunker Hill.
"It's me."
Banion sat up.
"What do you know. Mata Hari." "I wanted to thank you." "For what?"
"Not blowing my cover at your press conference." "Don't flatter yourself. That wasn't for your benefit." "How so?"
"You think I want Falopian and Murfletit to know how easily I was suckered? Everyone thinks you had to go home on family business." "Well, thanks anyway. How are you doing?" 'Are you on duty, or is that a personal question?" "I'm worried about you."
"1 know you are. I'm about to pry open your can of worms. My people are going to put such heat on the Congress that you and your alien-protecting colleagues are going to be running for -"
"Jack, you've got it very wrong. Trust me."
"Trust you? What a joke."
"You're making a mistake."
"Fine. I'll tell my two million marchers, 'Never mind, go home, Roz says I have it all wrong.' Fat chance. My advice to you would be, get a good lawyer for when you're subpoenaed to testify before Congress for crimes against the American peo -"
"Jack, shut up. Listen - there's more going on here than you know."
"Look, toots, I'm not Horatio and you're not Hamlet." "What?"
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy' Anyway, I'm supposed to be Hamlet here, not Horatio. I'm the one whose life got turned upside down by weird apparitions."
"I majored in Poli Sci, not English."
"Never mind. It's too late for a Shakespeare seminar. It's after three. I'm tired. I have a headache. I spent the whole day with Falopian and Murfletit."
Roz giggled.
"You're amused?"
"Can't help it. Every time I think of those two. They're such dorks."
"You wouldn't laugh if you knew what those 'dorks' are trying to turn this march into." "Oh?"
"Never mind. 1 keep forgetting I'm talking to a spy." "They're trying to push it. aren't they?"
"Damon keeps muttering about "convergence." They think it's nineteen seventeen and we're about to march on the Winter Palace. I feel like Kerensky."*
"Keep it together. If this thing turns ugly, it's not going to do your side any good. And someone's going to have to pay. Like you."
Banion yawned. "So what are you doing these days, aside from calling me on a tapped phone to find out what I know?"
Silence.
"I know. You can't go into that." He wanted to hang up. but he couldn't.
'Are you back in Chicago, editing Cosmos! 'Pleiadeans Are Lousy Lovers'?"
"I've moved on. Jack, I wish you'd believe me. That night - I really did think you were being set up. I was trying to protect you." "It doesn't matter now, Roz." "I care. It's gotten out of control. We're trying to -" "Who is 'we'?"
'All 1 can tell you that you have got this - through no fault of your own - one hundred and eighty degrees backward."
"Well, that clears up everything. I've got to get some sleep. I've got a real bitch of a day tomorrow."
"Be careful, baby."
"Good-bye."
He feel asleep wondering what she'd meant by "through no fault of your own."
"Yo, Scrubbsy, wake up. man. Wake up."
Scrubbs opened his eyes. Bradley was hovering over him. It was pitch black outside.
* Leader of the Russian Duma at the time of the Revolution who tried to keep things from getting out of hand, with spectacular lack of success.
"What time is it?"
"Time for your ass to rotate out of here." "Why?"
"The man. He's here." "What?"
"I went down to my boat. I was gonna do some fishin' before we went to work. There they were." "Who?"
"The man. Come on, get dressed, keep movin', take your clothes. I ain't no butler."
Scrubbs sat up, rubbed his eyes. His mouth tasted of Sheetrock dust. Bradley had made him work late last night to make up for his long coffee-break phone call. He pulled on his jeans.
"What man?"
"Three of 'em. They had badges." "What kind of badges?"
"Couldn't tell. Too dark. They asked me if it was my boat. I played dumb nigger. 'No sah! Dis heah ain' my boat. Dis boat belong to my man Bernard. Sometimes he loan it to me so I can go catch me a catfish.' Come on, move."
Scrubbs was pulling on his clothes. "Where are they now?"
"On their way to Bernard's place. Bernard ain't going to be happy to see them. Shit is going toJly when they knock on his door."
"Who's Bernard?"
"Drug dealer. Major drug dealer."
"Jesus Christ, Brad."
"Going to be loud. Come on - you waitin' for breakfast in bed?"
They drove through dark streets from Anacostia to Union Station. It was busy even at this early hour. Crowds carrying UFO signs were milling around.
Bradley said, "They won't find you in this mess of people. You'll be a needle in a haystack."
"What are you going to do?"
"Going fishing. Got a cousin in Pennsylvania."
Bradley handed Scrubbs a wad of cash. "That's your retirement fund. 1 been putting some of your pay aside."
Scrubbs counted it. There was five hundred dollars.
"Thanks, Bradley."
"Can 1 give you some advice!"
"Yeah, okay."
"Don't apply for no job hanging Sheetrock. You got no ability for it." They shook hands and parted.
FIFTEEN
The National Park Service had long since stopped giving out official crowd size estimates, since groups had begun suing them if they didn't like the estimates of their turnouts. The media, however, were under no such restraint. From the Capitol two miles down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial, their helicopter cameras showed a solid, impacted mass of humanity. By Friday noon CNN pronounced it the largest gathering in the capital in the nation's history. The Millennium Man March was on.
"We were thinking," the chief of the staff said to the president as they glumly watched TV in the Oval Office, "that it might make sense for you and the First Lady to go to Shangri-la by limousine."
"Why?" the president said suspiciously. He loved his helicopter, Marine One.* What better way to commute to your weekend home than to have a military helicopter land on your lawn to pick you up and whisk you away?
"The Service is nervous about your flying out over the crowd."
"What are they going to do, shoot me down?"
"Those are three million very strange people out there. I'm not sure I'd want to fly over them."
"I used to fly over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in unarmored Hueys. I'm not worried about dusting off over picnicking weirdos."
* Who wouldn't?
"Your call."
The chief of staff left the Oval Office and called the First Lady. A few minutes later, the First Lady called the president and informed him they would be traveling that afternoon to Shangri-la by limo. The president called his chief of staff and bellowed at him for going to the First Lady.
The change of routine was duly reported to the White House press corps. They badgered the press secretary into a statement that made it sound as though the president of the United States was afraid to fly over the Millennium Man Marchers. The press secretary later took issue with this interpretation of his remarks. The president, he said, was bound by Secret Service recommendations.
After hours of shouldering his way through the dense masses, Scrubbs managed to reach the perimeter of the stage area at the head of the Mall. It was guarded by Colonel Murfletit's security people, wearing their military-style jumpsuits with ascots and batons. All in all they looked like gay storm troopers.
"I have to speak with Mr. Banion," Scrubbs said, presenting himself to the least intelligent-looking one he could find.
"So does everyone."
"Son, I have a Priority Five message for Mr. Banion." Sounded official, anyway.
The guard stiffened. "Sir, I am not authorized to handle Priority Five-level message traffic."
"Well, who the hell around here is!" "You'll have to check with Commo." "Right. Commo."
"Communications. Over there, sir." He pointed to an unpromising looking area full of even more butch-appearing guards with ascots and batons.
Banion was inside the cocoon of his saucer-shaped trailer, trying to go over his speech while being interrupted every three minutes by someone urgently needing something. Yet for all the frenzy swirling about him, his fatigue, his lonely turmoil over Roz, he felt a strange serenity. He had worked hard for this moment, against enormous odds. They had tried to silence him, and they had failed. Now he was about to address his followers - his army, 3 million strong. It occurred to him that he had more people on his side than the U.S. armed forces had in uniform. Now he was about to poke a large forefinger in the eye of the Establishment that had dismissed and ostracized him. He saw himself in a long, historical context of revolutionaries, truth seekers, and -"Yes, Renira?"
"I've spoken with the Virginia Highway people. They say the roads are impassable between here and Dulles. We'll have to arrange for a helicopter to fly Miss Delmar in from the airport."
"Whatever."
- visionaries who were willing to take on the orthodoxies of -"Come in."
His heart sank at the sight of Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit. Falopian was avid to storm the heights and encircle the Capitol with a sit-in. He said that he had spoken with no less a personage than the head of the International Congress of Abductees, who reported that his people were for it. If this was war, let it start here.
Colonel Murfletit, his lips moister than usual with excitement, concurred. He had taken to quoting his hero of heroes, Patton. History might not afford another such opportunity for a thousand years! The diem must be carpeed! Colonel Muffin - as Roz used to call him - had never fought in a real war, only bureaucratic skirmishes. Here at last was his chance for martial glory.
Banion sighed and told them no, no, no, under no circumstances would there be a sit-in, or any other kind of confrontation. Now please, leave him, go, attend to their details. Surely they had work to do. He must have the cone of silence in which to compose thoughts'.
They murmurously withdrew. The phone rang. Elspeth answered. "One moment, please. Burton Galilee," she announced, "for you."
Well, well.
"Hello, Burt."
"Is this Mr. Millennium?" came the rich, chocolaty voice. "I was here with Martin in 'sixty-three. I thought that was a crowd! You got everyone running in circles." He lowered his voice, "You got them squealing like scalded hogs at the White House. They don't know whether to shit or go crazy." He laughed.
"What can I do for you, Burt?"
"Just calling to see if there's anything I can do for you. Want me to make some calls up to the Hill? See if we can't set up some meetings with some of the committee chairmen? Get you those hearings you want?"
"Burt" - Banion smiled - "are you proposing to lobby for me?" Burt laughed. "Now, Jack, you know I don't lobby. I just like to help my friends."
"So what's Bitsey up to this weekend?" Banion changed the subject.
"She and Tyler decided to spend it in the country. The English country."
Banion laughed.
"They're with some duke or other, scaring hell out of pheasants. One of those house-party deals. Prince of Wales was supposed to be joining them, with whatsername, woman caused all that fuss. Tyler likes to have a few royals around, you know, for tone. Bitsey still goes white as a sheet when your name comes up. And she's pretty white to start with."
