Collected short fiction, p.783
Collected Short Fiction, page 783
A cold fist had clenched on his stomach. He felt too sick to think.
“If your problem persists—” Kroman’s voice was a far-off drone he hardly heard. “You might want to consult a competent neurologist. The mind’s still a mystery. Even the senses are sometimes tricky. You can still feel the fingers of an amputated arm.”
The nurse beckoned again, but Kroman wasn’t through.
“Think about it, sir! Just think about it. For all you could prove, God may have created your whole world exclusively for you.”
He tried not to think about it. When the nurse came back to show him out, he wanted to kid her about the heat in her fire-colored hair, but the spot had blotted it out.
“Solipsism!” The word haunted him down to his car. “Solipsism.”
A philosophic theory? Philosophic hogwash! The blustery wind was real, and its diesel taint. No doubt about the snarling traffic and a howling ambulance. The steering wheel was real, solid to his hands. The whole world a sham, set up by a trickster God to test his soul? He didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe he had a soul. He’d never believed in anything except himself.
The spot had swelled and darkened, now a murky brown. The traffic lights were hard to see, but he learned to make them out by looking slightly aside. He was in the terminal when Zara’s plane came in. People had no faces, but he caught her tight black jeans and the purple lei around her neck.
“Sorry, Jake.” Her voice had an impatient edge, and she slipped away before he could kiss her. “You can talk to Ed.”
Creighton was just behind her, about to walk around him.
“Ed?” He caught Creighton’s sleeve. “Wait a minute.”
“Harley?” Creighton blinked at him in sleepy surprise. “If you’re here about that franchise, better find another fish to fry.”
“But I thought—” The spot hid Creighton’s eyes, but he saw the sunburn and the pink paper lei. “I don’t understand.”
“You can blame your ex-wife’s attorney.” Creighton moved to follow Zara. “He called last month, trying to locate you. He convinced us that you’re not the man we wanted.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your new ex-wife.” Creighton looked after Zara, who was walking on, the tight black jeans twitching seductively. “She wanted time to make up her mind. We’ve had a wonderful week together, and I helped her make it up.” He caught a hint of Creighton’s grin. “No problem there.”
His car was hard to find. Bigger and blacker than ever, the spot made it harder still to drive. He rear-ended a bright red Taurus stopped at a light, and sat with the driver cursing him for a stone-blind idiot till the cops came. He couldn’t see much of them, but they gave him a ticket and called a wrecker and stopped a taxi to take him home.
The driver helped with the key. He stumbled inside and blinked to find himself. Amy’s photo was gone when he squinted for it, and most of the refrigerator. He had to feel his way to the stairs. The railing slid out of his hand before he reached the top, and he felt the house crumbling under him. Clutching at nothing, he fell into nowhere.
1998
The Purchase of Earth
When the aliens arrived, they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.
I was mowing the front lawn that Saturday afternoon when my cell phone purred. I stopped the engine to answer, and heard a voice that almost stopped my heart.
“Clint? It’s Talimena, remember?”
I gulped and asked where she had been.
“A dynamite story,” she said. But not one for the phone. If you want to hear it, pick me up at the municipal airport.”
I asked when.
“I’m here now,” she said. “Getting my flyer secured.”
I left the mower where it was and drove fast to the Canyon airport, memories of Talimena Whiteheart bubbling in my mind. She liked to brag of her Cherokee blood, though with her long dark eyes and thick black hair she looked more Spanish. My life had never been the same since we met. I was begging her to marry me the night she disappeared.
We’d been out to dance at La Loba, the hottest spot in Amarillo. She gave me a kiss that took my breath when we got to her apartment well past midnight, but wouldn’t let me in. Next morning she was gone.
Her place was left locked and empty, with no sign of violence. She’d left no note, no hint of trouble, no word of any plans except to let me pick her up for work next morning because her red convertible was in the shop.
Nearly two years ago, and a dreadful time for me. Months of search turned up nothing. The cops gave me a rough interrogation. Her father suspected me of some foul play when he came from Oklahoma to clear out her apartment and take her car. I hadn’t tried to find anybody else.
Recalling all her wild, happy, indomitable splendor, I had a ticket for speeding before I reached the airport. I saw her flyer from the parking lot. A queer craft, it was a minor-bright silver bubble without wheels or wings. Yellow tape was stretched around it and a uniformed security officer was shouting to hold back a curious crowd.
She ran out to meet me, a total stranger till she spoke. Her garment was a sort of sari, a filmy fabric that looked like spun silver. She looked taller, her fine skin shining as if dusted with gold. Her hair clipped short, she wore a golden band around it with a huge, green-glowing gem on her forehead.
I was still staring, speechless, till her arms went around me. She kissed me on the mouth and her husky laugh at my befuddlement brought her old enchantment back. I caught her shoulders to see her better and asked again where she had been.
“Tomorrow.” She laughed again. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. What I want now is a rare beefsteak.” Bare and bright under the sheer sari, her arms slid back to hold me close. I caught an odd, keenly sweet aroma. “I’m hungrier,” she whispered, “for a night with you.”
Her blunt candor astonished me again. We’d spent nights together, nights that kept me enslaved, but only when she was in the mood and drunk enough, and had time from her career. We’d been together on the Amarillo American, I on the city desk, she as fashion editor and producer of a TV fashion series. She refused to think of marriage; career came first.
I let her drive my car; she’d always loved to drive. Pulling out of the parking lot, we passed her shining flyer again and the gazing crowd around it.
“It actually flies?” I asked. “With no wings?”
“No wings.” My wonder amused her. “And I’ve stranger things to show you.” One hand on the wheel, she slid the other arm around me. “But not tonight.”
“Your disappearance?” Curiosity gnawed me. “It baffled the cops and got me suspected of doing you in. Can’t you tell me anything?”
“Simple enough.” She made a willowy shrug and drew me closer. “They’d seen me on TV and mailed an offer. They phoned that night and sent a taxi to pick me up.”
“They?”
“They.” Her soft laugh mocked me. “You’ll be meeting them tomorrow.”
At La Loba she devoured a rare sirloin, and finished mine. The salted margaritas made her chunk enough. She let me drive us to the Pioneer, where she had phoned for her reservation. The sari came off as I shut the door, and that night with her was one I hope I don’t forget.
Awake next morning before she was, I showered, dressed, and turned the TV on, volume low. Watching, I forgot everything. An unknown object had appeared in the sky northwest of Amarillo. Something bigger and blacker than a storm cloud, so a rancher reported. Panic had spread from its shadow. Church services were canceled. The state police had ordered the whole county evacuated. A military aircraft from the Cannon Air Base in New Mexico had lost power and gone down, though the pilot glided away and ejected safely. A better description had come from the pilot of a spy plane that flew high above it.
“Biggest damn thing I ever saw.” He looked jittery. “God knows what keeps it up or what it is or where it came from.”
What his photos showed was a thick disk rather than any saucer shape. “At least a mile across,” he said. “Maybe five hundred feet tall.” Flat on top, it had a tall dome in the middle and strange structures towering all around the rim.
“I might have landed on it,” he said. “If I’d dared.”
Talimena woke, enchantingly nude. She glanced at the screen, waved a kiss at me, and went on to the bathroom.
“That thing?” I called after her, “You know what it is?”
“You’ll see it,” she said. “But first things first.”
I sat riveted to the news till she came back, still slick and dripping from the shower, to snap the TV off and help me strip. The gold dust had not washed off. Back in bed with her, I was impotent for half a minute, till her own electric wonder overwhelmed the wonder in the sky.
Afterward, again a dangerous stranger in the silver sari and that great jewel glowing on her forehead, she awed me into silence on the way down to breakfast. Service was slow, even with only a handful of people in the dining room.
“The cook went, home to be with his family,” a badly rattled waitress told us. “The manager’s in the kitchen.”
The other diners stared at Talimena till the waitress turned a TV on. A breathless announcer was stammering his story of that enormous object sinking slowly lower as he ran clips of men on horseback herding cattle out from under it. A calmer voice came on.
“People used to laugh at the SETI fanatics, keeping their radio dishes cocked for voices they never heard from outer space, but a White House spokesman has now confirmed that the incredible object now on the ground in the Texas panhandle, is in fact a gigantic spacecraft.
“The state department has issued a white paper documenting that radio and TV contact has been established. The aliens are not quite human, but they do display humanoid characteristics. They claim to have come from a distant base to welcome Earth into what they call their united galaxy.
“They have invited government officials to come aboard to meet their leaders. President McMillan has been with his cabinet since midnight, and the Congress is now in emergency session. Delegations from Washington and the Texas state government are on their way.
“Updates—”
“Turn the damn thing off!” Talimena shouted at the little group standing around the TV. “That’s enough for now.”
A fat man turned to scowl at her, his mouth yawning to protest. “Sit down.” Her voice rose commandingly. The jewel was flashing blue. “Let’s get on with breakfast.”
He sat down.
Our first waitress had disappeared, but a flustered girl replaced her. Talimena ordered ham and eggs, which she attacked with an eager appetite.
“They did feed me well,” she spoke between bites, “but it’s nice to be back to things I always loved.”
I had orange juice and coffee, and forgot them.
“Don’t take it so hard,” she tried to cheer me. “They’re absolutely wonderful. You’ll love them when you get to know them. The changes may seem difficult at first, but they’ve come to save us from ourselves.”
“Can’t you tell me?”
She laughed at me and nodded.
“I guess I’ve teased you long enough. They’re the Su’kyan. An expansive race. They’ve colonized five hundred planets in our galactic sector. We’re in great good luck to be next on the list.”
“Su’kyan?”
She laughed at my effort to say the name, with its gliding tones and an odd click in the middle. She said it again, correcting me.
“A lovely language! They have perfect pitch, and the tones change to turn every word into music. Not that you’ll ever speak it well. Not without the surgery I had to correct the human anatomy. With practice, though, you can get by.”
She stood up to stop my questions and had me drive her back to the airport. I stopped in the terminal drive to let her out.
“Park,” she said. “Come aboard the station with me.”
She tipped the security guard with a crisp new hundred-dollar bill. Me took the yellow tape from around her silver teardrop. A door dilated in the side of it. She beckoned me in and nestled into the seat beside me. From inside, its shell was transparent as glass. I saw no controls, but the jewel shimmered on her forehead and the field fell silently away. I dared another question.
“Without wings, how does it fly?”
“Antigravity.” A sinuous, carefree shrug. “Back at the base, I heard a lecture on antigravity propulsion and how it collapses space-time for interstellar jumps. Nothing I understood, but I’ve seen it work.”
I asked about the syndicate base.
“Far off, toward Orton. I had the agent show me our sun from there. So dim I could barely make it out.”
My head whirling, I found no nerve to ask for more about the syndicate. The teardrop carried us so high that the sky turned darkly purple, then down again toward the arid Texas prairie, where the station shone under the morning sun like an impossibly vast silver coin.
“Big, isn’t it?” She pointed, marveling like a child. “The new capital of Earth!”
She landed us on it, near the central dome. I followed her out, blinking at titanic strange constructions all around us. The oval door in the little teardrop shrank shut, and it took itself silently away toward something like a hangar at the edge of the deck. I saw half a dozen helicopters lined up there, three with American military markings. Human figure were leaving the others, lugging tripods and cameras.
“Network people,” she said. “Invited aboard to broadcast a historic event. We’re lucky to be here.”
Terrified into silence, I stood watching, trying to imagine what the aliens meant for us, till her jewel burned blue. An arched doorway was opening in the silvery dome. She led me up a ramp toward a platform below it. People were appearing there.
People? I squinted against the sun to see them.
“They look human.” Dazed, I spoke to myself. “Almost.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “Though maybe not quite so human as they look. Galactic citizens differ a lot. The syndicate is a Su’kyan project. They try to pick worlds where the natives resemble them. It’s pretty necessary, if we’re going to live to get her.”
I followed her up a ramp, but she stopped me at the top and went on to the aliens. Lean handsome beings, gold-dusted like she was, the full-busted women as tall as the men, all scantily clad in a rainbow of saris.
“Ty’roon!”
SHE CALLED THE LEADER’S NAME AND RAN TO MEET HIM.
Smiling an almost human smile, he sang something that must have been a greeting, caught her in his gold-dusted arms, and thrust out a long scarlet tongue to lick her nose. She looked up to lick his, caught his arm and led him toward me. I didn’t get their words, but he smiled again and leaned to crush my hand in a double-thumbed grip.
The camera crews were climbing the ramp. A party of humans came behind, staring at everything around them. I recognized the governor of Texas, a rawboned man in alligator boots and a high white hat, almost as tall as Ty’roon. Talimena introduced Ty’roon to a thin little bald man in a pin-stripe suit, the American Secretary of State.
The film crews bustled to arrange them in two groups, aliens facing humans, Ty’roon and Talimena standing between them. Ty’roon addressed the human leaders, his voice rising and falling in what really was a sort of eerie music, the huge gem on his forehead shimmering in time to it. Talimena translated.
“I speak to the people of Earth.” Her jewel was blazing, and her pealing voice was strange with his alien accent. “You will soon know me well. I am Ty’roon Ak’narth, Agent of Earth. I inform you now that your planet has been purchased by the Ninth Sector Syndicate, which is duly chartered under the laws of the Galactic Union. As the agent of the syndicate, answering only to them, I am vested with full authority on all matters related to the planet Earth.”
He spoke again, while Talimena listened. A man with a still camera crept warily forward, lights flashing. The statesmen were stricken dumb till the secretary grabbed for his muffled cell phone.
“You have no grounds for concent.” Ty’roon had fallen silent, and Talimena translated again. “Instead, we bring you cause for great rejoicing. Our surveyors have found your planet utterly dysfiutctional. You suffer from genocidal warfare. Terrorism unrestrained. Economic breakdowns. Famines and diseases. You’ve abandoned your religions and forgotten your ethics. You’ve lost faith even in your own primitive technologies. You’ve fallen close to race suicide.”
Empty excuses, I thought. Propaganda designed to cover the invasion. The governor scowled at Ty’roon and muttered at the secretary.
“We bring your salvation,” Talimena’s accents echoed the invader’s lilt. “We welcome you into galactic civilization. We bring you a new age of world harmony and peace, world security, liberation from your crippling barbarism.”
Pale and quivering with panic, the secretary shrilled into his cell phone. The governor grew louder, red in the face and yelling at Ty’roon.
“You say you own us?” He clenched fist lifted. “What the hell does that mean?”
“The agent means exactly what he says.” Talimena answered blandly. “Existing authorities may remain in place, at least for now, so long as they are faithful to the syndicate.”
“How the blazing hell—”
The agent sang louder, his gem blazing red. Talimena spoke when he paused, smiling benignly at the apoplectic governor.
“He begs you to understand our landing as a rescue mission. The scouts reported fatal failings in your social system, especially your dependence on disease, war, and famine to control your alarming population overgrowth. Agent Ty’roon promises to end your suicidal warfare, to rid the planet of crime and terror, to control disease, to provide masses of your people with useful employment, adequate housing, nutrition, and sanitation. In short, to insure the survival of your race.”
The secretary pushed his cell phone at an aide.
“Mr. Ty’roon—” The name came out as a squeaky stammer, and he tried again. “Ty—Ty’roon. I have conferred with our national leaders in Washington. Our government regards your uninvited landing here as a violation of American territory. We demand the immediate removal of your craft and yourselves.”
“If your problem persists—” Kroman’s voice was a far-off drone he hardly heard. “You might want to consult a competent neurologist. The mind’s still a mystery. Even the senses are sometimes tricky. You can still feel the fingers of an amputated arm.”
The nurse beckoned again, but Kroman wasn’t through.
“Think about it, sir! Just think about it. For all you could prove, God may have created your whole world exclusively for you.”
He tried not to think about it. When the nurse came back to show him out, he wanted to kid her about the heat in her fire-colored hair, but the spot had blotted it out.
“Solipsism!” The word haunted him down to his car. “Solipsism.”
A philosophic theory? Philosophic hogwash! The blustery wind was real, and its diesel taint. No doubt about the snarling traffic and a howling ambulance. The steering wheel was real, solid to his hands. The whole world a sham, set up by a trickster God to test his soul? He didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe he had a soul. He’d never believed in anything except himself.
The spot had swelled and darkened, now a murky brown. The traffic lights were hard to see, but he learned to make them out by looking slightly aside. He was in the terminal when Zara’s plane came in. People had no faces, but he caught her tight black jeans and the purple lei around her neck.
“Sorry, Jake.” Her voice had an impatient edge, and she slipped away before he could kiss her. “You can talk to Ed.”
Creighton was just behind her, about to walk around him.
“Ed?” He caught Creighton’s sleeve. “Wait a minute.”
“Harley?” Creighton blinked at him in sleepy surprise. “If you’re here about that franchise, better find another fish to fry.”
“But I thought—” The spot hid Creighton’s eyes, but he saw the sunburn and the pink paper lei. “I don’t understand.”
“You can blame your ex-wife’s attorney.” Creighton moved to follow Zara. “He called last month, trying to locate you. He convinced us that you’re not the man we wanted.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your new ex-wife.” Creighton looked after Zara, who was walking on, the tight black jeans twitching seductively. “She wanted time to make up her mind. We’ve had a wonderful week together, and I helped her make it up.” He caught a hint of Creighton’s grin. “No problem there.”
His car was hard to find. Bigger and blacker than ever, the spot made it harder still to drive. He rear-ended a bright red Taurus stopped at a light, and sat with the driver cursing him for a stone-blind idiot till the cops came. He couldn’t see much of them, but they gave him a ticket and called a wrecker and stopped a taxi to take him home.
The driver helped with the key. He stumbled inside and blinked to find himself. Amy’s photo was gone when he squinted for it, and most of the refrigerator. He had to feel his way to the stairs. The railing slid out of his hand before he reached the top, and he felt the house crumbling under him. Clutching at nothing, he fell into nowhere.
1998
The Purchase of Earth
When the aliens arrived, they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.
I was mowing the front lawn that Saturday afternoon when my cell phone purred. I stopped the engine to answer, and heard a voice that almost stopped my heart.
“Clint? It’s Talimena, remember?”
I gulped and asked where she had been.
“A dynamite story,” she said. But not one for the phone. If you want to hear it, pick me up at the municipal airport.”
I asked when.
“I’m here now,” she said. “Getting my flyer secured.”
I left the mower where it was and drove fast to the Canyon airport, memories of Talimena Whiteheart bubbling in my mind. She liked to brag of her Cherokee blood, though with her long dark eyes and thick black hair she looked more Spanish. My life had never been the same since we met. I was begging her to marry me the night she disappeared.
We’d been out to dance at La Loba, the hottest spot in Amarillo. She gave me a kiss that took my breath when we got to her apartment well past midnight, but wouldn’t let me in. Next morning she was gone.
Her place was left locked and empty, with no sign of violence. She’d left no note, no hint of trouble, no word of any plans except to let me pick her up for work next morning because her red convertible was in the shop.
Nearly two years ago, and a dreadful time for me. Months of search turned up nothing. The cops gave me a rough interrogation. Her father suspected me of some foul play when he came from Oklahoma to clear out her apartment and take her car. I hadn’t tried to find anybody else.
Recalling all her wild, happy, indomitable splendor, I had a ticket for speeding before I reached the airport. I saw her flyer from the parking lot. A queer craft, it was a minor-bright silver bubble without wheels or wings. Yellow tape was stretched around it and a uniformed security officer was shouting to hold back a curious crowd.
She ran out to meet me, a total stranger till she spoke. Her garment was a sort of sari, a filmy fabric that looked like spun silver. She looked taller, her fine skin shining as if dusted with gold. Her hair clipped short, she wore a golden band around it with a huge, green-glowing gem on her forehead.
I was still staring, speechless, till her arms went around me. She kissed me on the mouth and her husky laugh at my befuddlement brought her old enchantment back. I caught her shoulders to see her better and asked again where she had been.
“Tomorrow.” She laughed again. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. What I want now is a rare beefsteak.” Bare and bright under the sheer sari, her arms slid back to hold me close. I caught an odd, keenly sweet aroma. “I’m hungrier,” she whispered, “for a night with you.”
Her blunt candor astonished me again. We’d spent nights together, nights that kept me enslaved, but only when she was in the mood and drunk enough, and had time from her career. We’d been together on the Amarillo American, I on the city desk, she as fashion editor and producer of a TV fashion series. She refused to think of marriage; career came first.
I let her drive my car; she’d always loved to drive. Pulling out of the parking lot, we passed her shining flyer again and the gazing crowd around it.
“It actually flies?” I asked. “With no wings?”
“No wings.” My wonder amused her. “And I’ve stranger things to show you.” One hand on the wheel, she slid the other arm around me. “But not tonight.”
“Your disappearance?” Curiosity gnawed me. “It baffled the cops and got me suspected of doing you in. Can’t you tell me anything?”
“Simple enough.” She made a willowy shrug and drew me closer. “They’d seen me on TV and mailed an offer. They phoned that night and sent a taxi to pick me up.”
“They?”
“They.” Her soft laugh mocked me. “You’ll be meeting them tomorrow.”
At La Loba she devoured a rare sirloin, and finished mine. The salted margaritas made her chunk enough. She let me drive us to the Pioneer, where she had phoned for her reservation. The sari came off as I shut the door, and that night with her was one I hope I don’t forget.
Awake next morning before she was, I showered, dressed, and turned the TV on, volume low. Watching, I forgot everything. An unknown object had appeared in the sky northwest of Amarillo. Something bigger and blacker than a storm cloud, so a rancher reported. Panic had spread from its shadow. Church services were canceled. The state police had ordered the whole county evacuated. A military aircraft from the Cannon Air Base in New Mexico had lost power and gone down, though the pilot glided away and ejected safely. A better description had come from the pilot of a spy plane that flew high above it.
“Biggest damn thing I ever saw.” He looked jittery. “God knows what keeps it up or what it is or where it came from.”
What his photos showed was a thick disk rather than any saucer shape. “At least a mile across,” he said. “Maybe five hundred feet tall.” Flat on top, it had a tall dome in the middle and strange structures towering all around the rim.
“I might have landed on it,” he said. “If I’d dared.”
Talimena woke, enchantingly nude. She glanced at the screen, waved a kiss at me, and went on to the bathroom.
“That thing?” I called after her, “You know what it is?”
“You’ll see it,” she said. “But first things first.”
I sat riveted to the news till she came back, still slick and dripping from the shower, to snap the TV off and help me strip. The gold dust had not washed off. Back in bed with her, I was impotent for half a minute, till her own electric wonder overwhelmed the wonder in the sky.
Afterward, again a dangerous stranger in the silver sari and that great jewel glowing on her forehead, she awed me into silence on the way down to breakfast. Service was slow, even with only a handful of people in the dining room.
“The cook went, home to be with his family,” a badly rattled waitress told us. “The manager’s in the kitchen.”
The other diners stared at Talimena till the waitress turned a TV on. A breathless announcer was stammering his story of that enormous object sinking slowly lower as he ran clips of men on horseback herding cattle out from under it. A calmer voice came on.
“People used to laugh at the SETI fanatics, keeping their radio dishes cocked for voices they never heard from outer space, but a White House spokesman has now confirmed that the incredible object now on the ground in the Texas panhandle, is in fact a gigantic spacecraft.
“The state department has issued a white paper documenting that radio and TV contact has been established. The aliens are not quite human, but they do display humanoid characteristics. They claim to have come from a distant base to welcome Earth into what they call their united galaxy.
“They have invited government officials to come aboard to meet their leaders. President McMillan has been with his cabinet since midnight, and the Congress is now in emergency session. Delegations from Washington and the Texas state government are on their way.
“Updates—”
“Turn the damn thing off!” Talimena shouted at the little group standing around the TV. “That’s enough for now.”
A fat man turned to scowl at her, his mouth yawning to protest. “Sit down.” Her voice rose commandingly. The jewel was flashing blue. “Let’s get on with breakfast.”
He sat down.
Our first waitress had disappeared, but a flustered girl replaced her. Talimena ordered ham and eggs, which she attacked with an eager appetite.
“They did feed me well,” she spoke between bites, “but it’s nice to be back to things I always loved.”
I had orange juice and coffee, and forgot them.
“Don’t take it so hard,” she tried to cheer me. “They’re absolutely wonderful. You’ll love them when you get to know them. The changes may seem difficult at first, but they’ve come to save us from ourselves.”
“Can’t you tell me?”
She laughed at me and nodded.
“I guess I’ve teased you long enough. They’re the Su’kyan. An expansive race. They’ve colonized five hundred planets in our galactic sector. We’re in great good luck to be next on the list.”
“Su’kyan?”
She laughed at my effort to say the name, with its gliding tones and an odd click in the middle. She said it again, correcting me.
“A lovely language! They have perfect pitch, and the tones change to turn every word into music. Not that you’ll ever speak it well. Not without the surgery I had to correct the human anatomy. With practice, though, you can get by.”
She stood up to stop my questions and had me drive her back to the airport. I stopped in the terminal drive to let her out.
“Park,” she said. “Come aboard the station with me.”
She tipped the security guard with a crisp new hundred-dollar bill. Me took the yellow tape from around her silver teardrop. A door dilated in the side of it. She beckoned me in and nestled into the seat beside me. From inside, its shell was transparent as glass. I saw no controls, but the jewel shimmered on her forehead and the field fell silently away. I dared another question.
“Without wings, how does it fly?”
“Antigravity.” A sinuous, carefree shrug. “Back at the base, I heard a lecture on antigravity propulsion and how it collapses space-time for interstellar jumps. Nothing I understood, but I’ve seen it work.”
I asked about the syndicate base.
“Far off, toward Orton. I had the agent show me our sun from there. So dim I could barely make it out.”
My head whirling, I found no nerve to ask for more about the syndicate. The teardrop carried us so high that the sky turned darkly purple, then down again toward the arid Texas prairie, where the station shone under the morning sun like an impossibly vast silver coin.
“Big, isn’t it?” She pointed, marveling like a child. “The new capital of Earth!”
She landed us on it, near the central dome. I followed her out, blinking at titanic strange constructions all around us. The oval door in the little teardrop shrank shut, and it took itself silently away toward something like a hangar at the edge of the deck. I saw half a dozen helicopters lined up there, three with American military markings. Human figure were leaving the others, lugging tripods and cameras.
“Network people,” she said. “Invited aboard to broadcast a historic event. We’re lucky to be here.”
Terrified into silence, I stood watching, trying to imagine what the aliens meant for us, till her jewel burned blue. An arched doorway was opening in the silvery dome. She led me up a ramp toward a platform below it. People were appearing there.
People? I squinted against the sun to see them.
“They look human.” Dazed, I spoke to myself. “Almost.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “Though maybe not quite so human as they look. Galactic citizens differ a lot. The syndicate is a Su’kyan project. They try to pick worlds where the natives resemble them. It’s pretty necessary, if we’re going to live to get her.”
I followed her up a ramp, but she stopped me at the top and went on to the aliens. Lean handsome beings, gold-dusted like she was, the full-busted women as tall as the men, all scantily clad in a rainbow of saris.
“Ty’roon!”
SHE CALLED THE LEADER’S NAME AND RAN TO MEET HIM.
Smiling an almost human smile, he sang something that must have been a greeting, caught her in his gold-dusted arms, and thrust out a long scarlet tongue to lick her nose. She looked up to lick his, caught his arm and led him toward me. I didn’t get their words, but he smiled again and leaned to crush my hand in a double-thumbed grip.
The camera crews were climbing the ramp. A party of humans came behind, staring at everything around them. I recognized the governor of Texas, a rawboned man in alligator boots and a high white hat, almost as tall as Ty’roon. Talimena introduced Ty’roon to a thin little bald man in a pin-stripe suit, the American Secretary of State.
The film crews bustled to arrange them in two groups, aliens facing humans, Ty’roon and Talimena standing between them. Ty’roon addressed the human leaders, his voice rising and falling in what really was a sort of eerie music, the huge gem on his forehead shimmering in time to it. Talimena translated.
“I speak to the people of Earth.” Her jewel was blazing, and her pealing voice was strange with his alien accent. “You will soon know me well. I am Ty’roon Ak’narth, Agent of Earth. I inform you now that your planet has been purchased by the Ninth Sector Syndicate, which is duly chartered under the laws of the Galactic Union. As the agent of the syndicate, answering only to them, I am vested with full authority on all matters related to the planet Earth.”
He spoke again, while Talimena listened. A man with a still camera crept warily forward, lights flashing. The statesmen were stricken dumb till the secretary grabbed for his muffled cell phone.
“You have no grounds for concent.” Ty’roon had fallen silent, and Talimena translated again. “Instead, we bring you cause for great rejoicing. Our surveyors have found your planet utterly dysfiutctional. You suffer from genocidal warfare. Terrorism unrestrained. Economic breakdowns. Famines and diseases. You’ve abandoned your religions and forgotten your ethics. You’ve lost faith even in your own primitive technologies. You’ve fallen close to race suicide.”
Empty excuses, I thought. Propaganda designed to cover the invasion. The governor scowled at Ty’roon and muttered at the secretary.
“We bring your salvation,” Talimena’s accents echoed the invader’s lilt. “We welcome you into galactic civilization. We bring you a new age of world harmony and peace, world security, liberation from your crippling barbarism.”
Pale and quivering with panic, the secretary shrilled into his cell phone. The governor grew louder, red in the face and yelling at Ty’roon.
“You say you own us?” He clenched fist lifted. “What the hell does that mean?”
“The agent means exactly what he says.” Talimena answered blandly. “Existing authorities may remain in place, at least for now, so long as they are faithful to the syndicate.”
“How the blazing hell—”
The agent sang louder, his gem blazing red. Talimena spoke when he paused, smiling benignly at the apoplectic governor.
“He begs you to understand our landing as a rescue mission. The scouts reported fatal failings in your social system, especially your dependence on disease, war, and famine to control your alarming population overgrowth. Agent Ty’roon promises to end your suicidal warfare, to rid the planet of crime and terror, to control disease, to provide masses of your people with useful employment, adequate housing, nutrition, and sanitation. In short, to insure the survival of your race.”
The secretary pushed his cell phone at an aide.
“Mr. Ty’roon—” The name came out as a squeaky stammer, and he tried again. “Ty—Ty’roon. I have conferred with our national leaders in Washington. Our government regards your uninvited landing here as a violation of American territory. We demand the immediate removal of your craft and yourselves.”
