Little Green Men (8 page)

"Somewhat disoriented" was a significant improvement on "raped by aliens." Banion, standing in the kitchen in his bathrobe, peering down at the
Post,
let out a faint sigh of relief. He would E-mail Renira and tell her to prepare damning research for his column on the
...
let's see
...
abominable deterioration of emergency room care in America's
...
best be careful, the bastards might retaliate by really leaking everything . . . well, Renira would find something about the medical establishment worth damning.

As he plunged the metal filter down onto the coffee grounds, Banion ruminated gloomily on the jokes about his golf-cart technique that would follow.
Jack! Running in Ind
y this year?
Well, it could be a lot worse.

He heated his milk and mixed it with the coffee. He shifted uncomfortably. There it was again, that pain - in the ass. What the hell
had
happened?

"There's a tremendous amount of material on this subject." Elspeth Clark, his Georgetown University research assistant, dumped a heavy cardboard file box labeled "UFO's" on Banion's desk. Banion winced at the label. What if a reporter had seen her coming into his office with a box labeled "UFO's"?

'Are you doing a show on it?" Elspeth asked.

"No, no. Of course not. It's
...
I may
...
I don't know
...
do a column on it. Use it in a book."

"Not the Ben and Max book?" This was how she referred to the Franklin and Robespierre book.

"No. I'm toying with a book on millenarianism and the decline of rational thought. Something along those lines. Not sure yet."

Elspeth began pulling books and files out of the box. "I had a fax from Paris yesterday, from that Robespierre scholar I told you about? The one I found on the Internet, in the Sorbonne chat room? He did his Ph.D. thesis on the Revolution and says he remembers seeing a letter somewhere from Robespierre to Madame Farci, his mistress, mentioning a conversation he'd had with a Monsieur Franklin about

'mon petit probleme’*
and that Monsieur Franklin had recommended
'un cours bien therapeutique d'electricite.
’**
He thinks he might be able to find the letter. He said we'd need to pay him for his time. Might be worth it. If we have a letter establishing t
hat Franklin was advising Robes
pierre on electrical therapy for venereal disease, then it's not so far out that they would have been talking revolution in Madame Chantal's. Right?"

She was good, this one. She had enthusiasm, more than Banion would have mustered himself for the peanuts he paid his Georgetown researchers. It almost shamed him. But the chance to work
for John O
. Banion as a mere graduate student - who knew where that could lead? Possibly to even more low-paying grunt work as a production assistant on his TV show.

"Mr. Banion?"

"Um
?" He'd been daydreaming. He sat up straight. "Yes, that could be promising. Check with Renira on what we can pay him. You have to be careful with these academic types. They go in for the old bait and switch. Tell you there's a map somewhere proving the Mesopotamians discovered America and string you along forever. Fix a price beforehand for the letter
on delivery,
and hold him to it. Don't let him sweet-talk you. Be careful - he's French. And insist on a photocopy of the document. Better get something from NIH**
*
on what they were doing in the eighteenth century for. . . syphilis." She was pretty and young. He felt uncomfortable talking about venereal disease with her. He threw in an uncharacteristic "Fine work. Elspeth."

"Thank you, sir.

"I'm wondering what kind of treatment Franklin advised," she said. "Tying a kite string to his penis in an electrical storm?"

*
"My littl
e problem."

**
"A good course of electrical therapy." What precisely Franklin had in mind is not clear. "

***
National Institutes of Health
.

Banion blushed.

"This UFO material," he said gravely. "Why don't you digest it for me?"

She had come prepared. She gave him an excellent tour of the fuzzy horizon of the UFO world, beginning with the First sightings in 1947, up to the present day, when one could actually purchase an insurance policy in the event of being abducted by aliens. The first U.S. abduction had taken place in 1961, in New Hampshire. An interracial couple named Barney and Betty Hill had been in their Chevy along Route 3, stargazing through binoculars, when, bang - next thing they knew Betty was being administered what she later called "a pregnancy test," a long needle driven into her stomach. Barney ended up with insomnia and a duodenal ulcer.

They jotted dots on paper, a "star map" to show investigators where their abductors hailed from: Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2. The map had given some - if not conclusive - pause to such an eminent scoffer as Carl Sagan of Cornell University. One psychiatrist who examined the Hills opined that their experience had resulted from some unresolved conflicts having to do with their interracial status. The UFO debunker Philip Klass put it down to their having been hypnotized by some freak "plasma" that had leached off a nearby high-voltage power line, the first time in history that a religious experience had been attributed to a New Hampshire utility company.

That was the problem with alien visitations -
everyone
had a rational explanation for what had happened, except of course the peopl
e who'd been nabbed. Even Carl J
ung had an explanation. He'd gone to the trouble of writing a book about the whole phenomenon in 1959. According to Jung, we were at the end of one era and the beginning of another, witnessing nothin
g less than a powerful mythogen
esis, the birth of a new religion. Earlier generations would have called them gods - we gave them an acronym: UFO's. He said they were a
phenomenon deeply embedded in the consciousness of mankind, the eternal and inexhaustible craving for "salvation from above."

Banion leaned back in his chair as Elspeth's briefing continued. Salvation from a
bove? Okay, fine. But he. John O
. Banion, personally had
no
need to be saved from above, much less by little green gods. They might do for the masses but not for a reasonably churchgoing Episcopalian such as himself. Banion didn't spend all that much time in church - Christmas and Easter were enough - but when he did get down on his knees, it was before Him who died on the Cross, not some bug-eyed albino from Zeta Reticuli 1. If aliens were abducting so many Americans - one in fifty, according to one poll - the obvious question was: why did the new gods reveal themselves only to - how to put it? - the lower orders?

The Nazarene was pretty working class Himself, but He did hang out with the more respectable element as well, tax collectors, Pharisees, the odd member of the Sanhedrin, gents like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, substantial fellows.

Honestly. It was all so preposterous on its face. A few pathetic proles out to get attention make up stories about being abducted, the press duly reports them, Hollywood makes movies out of them, soon everyone wants a piece of the action and abductions are so commonplace it's no longer enough just to be abducted, now it's sexual probing -

Elspeth continued, "And a number of abductees report a strong odor of ammonia and cinnamon. Maybe they need to replace their air freshener. Mr. Banion? Sir? Should I go on?"

"I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, Jack."

Banion sat in Dr. Hughes's office, exhausted and harried from a nightmare twenty-four hours that had included a CAT scan, MRI, blood work, and a colonoscopy (which Banion suspected Dr. Hughes had tacked on purely for purposes of revenue). But now he was about to have his worst fears confirmed - Burning Bush had been a hallucination brought on by a tumor, a dread astral cytoma that had possessed his intellectual jelly like a starfish, sinking its tentacles into the brilliant gristle of his brain, deeper and deeper until - oh God . . .

"Your bad cholesterol's up five points." "Jesus Christ, Bill. Don't
do
that!"

Hughes smiled. "You don't have a brain tumor. Your colon's clear as a bell. You're in perfect health, aside from the slight elevation in LDL-" "But
how
do
you
explain
what
happened
on
the
golf
course?"
"I can't. That's not my field." 'Are you saying I need a shrink?"

"You've got a lot on your plate right now. Why don't we try something?" He scribbled on a prescription pad and slid it across the polished table surface at Jack, as if it were the opening price of a negotiation.

"Prozac?"

'A very light dose, just enough to take the edge off."

"I can't take antidepressants!
I
need my edge! My show! I'm moderating the presidential debates!"

"From where I'm sitting, I'd say you've got edge to spare."

'All right. Let's say it
was
a reality disruption or whatever you want to call it, you supply the medical jargon. How do you explain the ammonia and cinnamon? These are not flavors normally found in suburban Maryland woods!"

Banion realized two things: he was shouting, and Dr. Hughes's face had taken on a
nurse-quickly-the-straitjacket!
look.

"There's a guy I work with sometimes. Really bright, low key. Let me give him a call. He's in the building. Maybe he can see you right now."

"You're saying you think this is psychological, is that it? After thousands of dollars of tests, you're saying I need to go rent a couch for a hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour."

"You told me yourself that you were assaulted by the crew of a flying saucer while you were playing golf. I'm trying to take this one step at a time."

Banion had called Burton Galilee from his car after storming out of Dr. Hughes's office. Banion didn't have a best friend as such, someone to whom one would turn in such situations. But he and Burt went back twenty years, and he trusted him. Everyone trusted Burton Galilee. Presidents, Supreme Court justices trusted him. The notoriously tight-lipped chairman of the Federal Reserve was even said to confide his lurid fears of inflation to Burton Galilee.

Burton had sounded a bit surprised by the urgent call but had said, by all means, come right away. He probably had to cancel something. As a senior partner at Crumb, Schimmer, Burton had most hours of his days spoken for months in advance, even at S500 per. Burton, the son of an Alabama hog farmer, had gotten his corner office on Pennsylvania Avenue by dint of charm, intelligence, talent, and the Establishment's sense that they had better admit their own African-American into the clubhouse before a less ruly one was thrust upon them, someone like the Reverend Bacon. It was a wise selection: Burton Galilee was eminently clubbable. He had a great talent: he made white people feel good about themselves. They could honestly say,
Me,
prejudiced?
Hell,
one
of
my
bestfriends
is
Burt
Galilee.

He rose from behind his enormous desk to greet the obviously distraught Banion.

He'd never seen Jack Banion look like this. Over the phone he'd sounded like he was calling from under ten tons of trouble and all of it concrete. So what had this prissy Princeton boy gone and done?

Driving under the influence? No, not his style. Man only drank wine. White wine. Banion was the whitest man he knew. To judge from the face of woes blinking at him through spectacles, this was serious trouble, the kind keeps you from closing your eyes at night. Woman trouble? Was old Jack mustanging on the side? That English secretary of his, with the magnificent tits? Possible, possible. Someone's wife? A weird but not implausible thought occurred: had Jack knocked up some girl? Was he coming to him for advice on how to handle it? Galilee felt a little prick of anger. Wouldn't it be just like one of these Ivy League dandelions to come whimpering to him:
Burt,
you're
an oversexed
Negro,
you
must
know
all
about
abortions,
how
do
I
go
about this?
Do
I
charge
it
on
my
Visa
card
or
American
Express?
If it was that, damnit all, he was going to hand him the yellow pages and kick his lily white ass out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

Or
..
. Burton continued to muse as Banion ambled, zombielike, to his seat: could this be a sexual crisis of a different sort? Twenty years earlier a prominent columnist had come to him straight from a trip to Moscow, looking like he hadn't slept in days, and told him that the KGB had taken photos of him in bed at the Metropol Hotel with one of their boy toys. They'd confronted him with the photos and told him they wanted him to take a kindlier view toward Soviet foreign policy in his writings. Burt Galilee had a momen
t of clarity: Banion was the la
test victim of "fairy shaking," the blackmail practiced by some D.C. cops of photographing married men coming out of gay bars and threatening to expose them. My my
my.
He could hardly wait to hear the details.