The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria (23 page)

“Come with me, sweetie,” I say to the girl, standing and holding out my hand. “Let’s get you back to your parents.”

She doesn’t look at me. “I want to stay,” she says flatly.

“We have to let Mr. Howard do his work,” I say. “He’s the only chance the unicorn has. You want to help the unicorn, right?”

“Yes.”

“The best way for us to help is to get out of the way.”

She considers this, pets the horned horse more vigorously to help her think. Then—so, so carefully—she sets the unicorn’s head on the ground, scoots her legs out from under. The unicorn is well beyond noticing such subtle gestures. Its black unmoving oculus reflects the clouds.

The girl rises and takes my hand. “Please do what you can, Mr. Ranger,” she says to Gavin.

Gavin opens a leather satchel of sharp instruments on the ground. They look a little crude for the fine cuts surgery usually requires. They look like tools for an autopsy: for sawing, hacking, flensing off. But maybe those are the tools field surgery on a unicorn require. How would I know?

“Don’t you worry,” Gavin says to the girl. “I’ll have Mr. Unicorn patched up in no time.”

The support team is everything I could want from British rescuers. I’m offered tea and blankets and biscuits and a satellite phone. I call my editor at the
Squint
, Leniquia Yancey, and confess how I blew the story.

“Fuck journalistic ethics!” she says. Love that woman.

The support team does even better with the little girl. They’ve got her sitting on the tailgate of a pickup, drinking tea from a thermos, wrapped in a blanket she doesn’t need. They washed her feet. A comfortingly overzealous Mary Poppins kneels behind her in the bed of the truck and brushes out her hair. The woman chats nonstop the entire time, a stream of solicitous chatter that, like all good white-noise machines, is threatening to put the blanketed girl to sleep.

But the girl wakes up immediately when Gavin rejoins us.

I have exactly one second to gather the truth from his body language. Then Gavin sees the girl scrutinizing him and muscles up a smile. He marches over to her with his elbows out, like he’s about to start a musical number. “How are we doing? My people taking good care of you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to your mum and dad? I bet they were glad to hear your voice.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll, you’ll be back with your family in a few hours.”

“Did you save him?”

He had to know that question was coming, but in the moment he
still finds himself unprepared to answer. “Well,” he says slowly, casting his glance downward, “it wasn’t easy.” But then, looking at her conspiratorially: “But, yes. I saved him.”

“Really?” Her voice is simultaneously dubious and hopeful.

Gavin clears his throat. “We had to pull a bit of a trick to pull it off. You see, unicorns really are magic in their own universe. But when they come here, suddenly they’re as normal as any other horse.”

“They’re magical?”

“Sure they are, in their own time and place. Unicorns don’t die or get sick or grow old in their own universe. Once I got him back to his rightful place, he healed up like that.” Gavin snaps.

The girl blooms. “You can do that?”

“Sure I can. Can’t I, team?”

“Yes. Oh, certainly. Do it all the time,” says the team.

The girl is looking from face to face. She seems better. Finally she looks at me. “Is it true, Ms. Reál?”

“If Mr. Howard says so,” I say automatically.

“Promise?”

How can I promise? Gavin’s lying out of his ass. It’s not like there’s some handy stargate we can push them through to send unicorns back to their universe. They’re the first verifiable case we have of a living creature passing between realities, but that may only be because, since they don’t exist in this one, they were easy to identify. Millions of animals may be traveling back and forth between universes, or maybe just unicorns. Who knows? Certainly not us, not yet. We have zero
idea how to send them back.

So why am I not telling the girl all this?

Because the truth will gut her afresh. Because she’s endured more than enough. Because she can learn the truth later, when she’s stronger: maybe even from me, if she happens to read this article. If you’re reading this, P—, I’m sorry. As a reporter, I’m supposed to be a steward of the truth. But as unheroic as it sounds, it’s way better to lie and stay alive.

I take P—’s hands and look her in the eye and say, “Sweetie, I promise you, that unicorn is as alive as you and me.”

Hamilton—everyone called him Ham—had fully bought into the bacon-as-fashion fad. That night as he patrolled the Arizona border with Alex, his ensemble featured a bacon wristwatch, bacon suspenders, bacon bolo tie, and bacon boots branded with the image of a pig cutting bacon out of its stomach and eating it raw and loving every lip-licking bite.

Ham’s t-shirt was comparatively subtle. It read, “If I Were Muslim, My 2nd Wife’d Be BACON.”

This shirt offended Alex. Not because it was anti-Islamist, but because it was poorly written. If you’re making a t-shirt about loving bacon and having multiple wives, shouldn’t you make bacon the
first
wife? You really want to wear a shirt advertising to the world that you love your wife
more
than bacon? That’s not funny. That’s half-assed.

And Alex was sick to death of half-assed. That’s why he’d volunteered to join MOAT: Maintaining Our American Turf. No pay, no benefits, and it was BYO everything: badge, booze, ammo, porno, everything. But it was a small price to pay to serve your country. Let Mexicans cross over to American soil so they could take American jobs and sponge off American services, all while America foots the bill? Not in his America.

Between the guns and the porno and the camaraderie with other patriots, patrols were the social highpoint of Alex’s week. But the
watch tonight was uncharacteristically unfun. Ham and Alex reclined on the hood of Alex’s blue-and-rust truck—backs against the windshield, rifles on their laps—not speaking. Alex had tried to explain to Ham how half-assed his shirt was, which led Ham to the conclusion that Alex hated freedom.

They might have sat sulking side by side all night long had not Ham seen, from between his bacon boots, two figures in the distance walking blithely toward America.

Ham smacked Alex’s arm and said, “Look, Alex! Our first Mexicans! It’s go-time! It’s show-time! Rock ‘n’ roll!” etc.

Ham was already hugging his rifle and rolling off the hood of the truck by the time Alex had raised his binoculars. He saw a man and a woman. They looked white, but some Mexicans do. The man wore a tuxedo with a lavender ruffled shirt, and sported pomaded black hair and a mustache so precise he must have trimmed it with a stencil. He was Fred Astaire thin and seemed to have no trouble trekking through desert terrain in tuxedo shoes. The woman was every bit as light on her feet, even though she wore a red flamenco dress and black flamenco heels. She carried a folded fan in one hand and her skirts in the other, and she had a huge red flower tucked behind one ear, burning like a star against her brunette, tightly-bunned hair. The pair did not look like people who’d risk their lives hiking through the desert for days in order to violate American immigration policy. They looked happy, clean, and hydrated, like a rich couple leaving a Spanish-themed costume ball.

They were still a ways off, chatting and laughing amiably, when Ham reentered Alex’s field of vision. Ham was chugging toward the couple faster than Alex thought he could possibly move, the bacon suspenders struggling with all their might to keep his buttcrack from showing. A losing battle.

“Ham!” Alex yelled as he mobilized. “Stand down, stand down!” But Ham had played this scenario out too many times to stand down now. He dropped to one knee and steadied his rifle. Sort of: its aim heaved along with his chest. “Freeze! Mexi! Cans!” he yelled between breaths.

“Oh, we aren’t Mexicans, Ham,” said the woman. Neither Ham nor Alex should have been able to hear her so clearly from that distance. It was like her voice had emerged from within their own heads. That made Alex jump.

A few seconds later, Ham flinched. His cholesterol-coated reflex arcs took a little longer to react. “The hell you know my name, lady?” he asked finally.

“We are aliens,” said the man. He sounded exactly like Ricardo Montalban, may he rest in peace.

“Exactly!” said Ham, straightening his aim. “And we’re here to stop aliens from entering this country.”

“No, numbnuts,” said the woman. “Not Mexican aliens.
Actual
aliens.”

“Extraterrestrials,” the man added helpfully.

That word, “extraterrestrials,” had come from Alex. The man had
reached into Alex’s brain and borrowed it. Alex could feel it. It felt like the man was a cook searching for a recipe and Alex was his recipe box. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, exactly. But if you haven’t agreed in advance to serve as someone’s recipe box, it’s a bit of a violation.

Alex, now next to Ham, patted Ham’s rifle until it pointed at the ground. He grabbed Ham by his left armpit and lifted him to his feet. Looking at the man and woman, he said to Ham: “You’re a slow-witted fuck and these really are aliens. I need to think, so I’m going to buy us some time. Follow my lead.”

“Yeah bro,” said Ham, his rifle still pointed at his own left boot.

Alex walked over to the aliens until they were in hand-shaking range. “You say you’re extraterrestrials? Prove it.”

“Sure thing,” said the woman. “How?”

“Well, show me something alien. What can your kind do?”

“Oh,” said the man with honeydripping Montalbanity, “we can manipulate matter in ways that will seem godlike to you. How about we fulfill some minor wish of yours?”

He squinted at Alex for a moment, and then, smiling broadly at what he’d discovered there, turned Alex’s truck into Margaret Thatcher.

The Iron Lady wore one of her classic no-nonsense skirt-suits—this one a flattering powder-blue—and sensible heels. Her hair was a petrified corona of orange dye.

“Couldn’t you at least have imagined her in a bikini?” said Ham.

“Show some respect, shithead,” said Alex out of the side of his mouth, straightening himself as Thatcher strode toward him and
shook his hand.

“Alex. Pleasure to meet you,” she said.

“It’s truly an honor, Madame Former Prime Minister,” said Alex. “You’ve been a hero of mine ever since I was a kid. I would follow you even unto the gates of Hell.”

Thatcher nodded once at him, as if she accepted his fealty and, indeed, might someday call on it. Then she walked over and greeted Ham, then each of the aliens.

“Alex is a big fan of yours,” said the Montelban look-alike. “You are literally his dream come true. Ham, by contrast, only vaguely knows who you are. He is currently trying to picture you wearing a bacon bikini.”

“What? No,” Ham protested, but he could tell no one believed him. So he changed tack: “Just how deep into our heads are you, aliens?”

“I don’t know about my friend,” said the woman, “but I’m far enough into your brain to serve as your conscience: a position, by the looks of things in here, that’s been vacant for a long time. So as my first act as your new conscience, I’m recommending that you seek professional help. Nobody needs that much porno, bro.”

“I’m too weak to stop,” agreed Ham.

Thatcher crossed her arms and said, “Enough chit-chat. Have you aliens come to invade Earth?”

“Oh,” said Alex. Then: “Oh!”

“What?” asked Ham.

“These aliens,” said Alex, cottoning on even as he spoke, “are
obviously powerful enough to destroy us without breaking a sweat, seeing as they were able to fashion a perfect Margaret Thatcher out of a Chevy. But we’re still here, so total annihilation doesn’t seem to be what they’re after. So maybe invasion is the plan. Is it?”

“No,” the man said affably.

“Then what?” pressed Thatcher.

“We are explorers,” said the woman, circling the humans, fanning herself. “We seek to befriend all intelligent life in the multiverse. Do you know how the multiverse works?”

Ham and Thatcher shrugged. “I saw a special on the History Channel,” said Alex.

“Here you go,” said the woman, and inserted into their minds a complete understanding of the multiverse.

“My God,” said Thatcher.

“It’s so beautiful,” said Alex.

“They should have sent a poet,” said Ham.

“As you can see, it’s all very complicated and very interesting,” the woman continued. “So we’re making site-visits to all sentient life-forms to learn as much as we can from them.”

“But we have rules,” added the man. “We always approach a new civilization cautiously, inconspicuously. We wear the local bodies, partake of the local metabolism: you know, try to blend in.”

“Dressed like that?” asked Ham.

“Our research indicated that these were appropriate costumes for this location and time. Are they not?”

“Not unless you’re an extra in a Zorro movie,” said Alex.

“You see?” said the woman. “There’s only so much you can learn from afar. That’s exactly why we’re here.”

“We don’t make contact with leaders at first,” the man picked up. “We don’t want to become pawns in the local planet’s political maneuverings. Instead, we meet with common folks like you. Get the lay of the land, see if this is a good time to begin a conversation with the species. Only when we’re satisfied that all the planet’s sentient species are ready to join the greater cosmic community do we share our technology with them.”