Touched by an Alien (5 page)

“Sure, Kitty. I know you’re a grump when you wake up, just like your mother. Maybe we’ll take the calling in shifts.”

“Dad, Mom’s going to have jet lag. Let her sleep.”

“Her daughter just stopped a terrorist. I think she’ll be wired.”

“Great, then yeah, let her call, too. Maybe the rest of the family can go round robin with it.”

“Great idea! I’ll make some calls between now and the next two hours.”

“Dad . . . joke. Really, a joke. Please don’t call anyone else. I think the Department is worried I’ll become a target for attack. Let’s not give them any reason to be right.” I was good at this. I’d almost never lied to my parents in my entire life, and now I was lying to my father like a natural.

“Okay.” I could hear the disappointment. “Not even your uncle?”

“Definitely not Uncle Mort.” Uncle Mort was a career Marine heading into his fourth decade with the Corps and the last person I wanted advised. Unless, of course, I was in danger. Then I wanted Uncle Mort to rally the troops and come save me. However, Uncle Mort would be likely to know there was no Homeland Security facility in Las Vegas. “I don’t want him to feel like he has to come or something. I’d like to do this on my own.”

“Okay, kitten. I understand. I’ll only call Uncle Mort if you don’t answer the phone.”

That I could get behind. “Sounds good. But, Dad, remember, in the wee hours, try calling more than once. If I’m safe and asleep, I may not hear the phone even if I have it right by me.”

“Three times, that’s it. You don’t answer, I call in the Marines.”

“Great, perfect plan. I’ll talk to you, well, every two hours for a while. So, love you, gotta go now.”

“Love you, too. Be good, and don’t let them push you around. You’re a hero, and heroes deserve respect.”

“Will do.” I closed the phone and looked back to White. “My father will be calling me every two hours from now until I’m released by Homeland Security. He has an extensive network of friends and family, and despite my telling him not to, I’ll bet he calls a few of them anyway. Your move.” I looked at Christopher. “Oh, and nothing had better happen to my parents, either.”

Christopher shrugged. “I’m image control, not eliminations.”

“Great.” I turned back to White. “So?”

“So,” he sighed, “we have two hours to convince you to tell your father that all’s well.”

“Give or take. He’s willing to call regularly for days. This is probably fun for him.”

“I guess we’ll have to time things out,” Martini said. “Don’t want him calling at an inopportune moment. Could ruin the mood. Though I’m used to waking up at odd hours.”

“So far, I see it as a nonissue,” I told him. He just grinned again.

“We need to go,” White said.

“Nope. I want some answers. Start with the boys here,” I indicated the rest of the crew with my cell phone, right before I dropped it back in my purse. “I’d like to know if I’m dealing with aliens or just weirdos.”

“Both,” Martini interjected before White could open his mouth. “I’m the only normal one.”

“I weep for our species. Mr. White? I’d really like some honesty. And I’d like it now.”

WHITE HEAVED A SIGH
. ���It’s complicated. Can we compromise, and I tell you about it while we travel to the crash site?”

I decided it might be a good idea to acquiesce, particularly since Christopher and some of the guys near him looked as though they’d be willing to just beat me over the head and solve the issue that way. “Fine. Start while we’re walking to the car.”

He nodded, and Martini and Gower moved and flanked me. “Don’t mind Christopher,” Gower said in a low voice. “He’s upset that he screwed up. Your picture out there creates huge issues to fix.”

“He’s gay,” Martini added.

“No, I’m not,” Christopher said from right behind me. I managed not to jump. “But the princess here isn’t my type.”

“I’m crushed.”

“Don’t be. I like ’em stupid.” Christopher walked around us and headed to the door to the parking lot, which he held open. Apparently he was now part of my entourage. Accordingly, I took a closer look. He was at least six inches shorter than Martini, but still taller than me by at least a few, so I called him about five-ten. Straight brown hair, green eyes, slender but clearly well muscled. Handsome, of course. There were, I had to admit, worse ways to go than surrounded by this much drool-worthy manflesh. Thing was, I didn’t want to go.

“So, I’m not hearing an explanation,” I said to White, who was now next to Gower.

“This building we’re leaving is the holding facility. You’re right, it’s hot. When the superbeings create, they alter so much that they aren’t human at all, not really of this world any longer. Therefore, they preserve in the heat. We have a high heating bill in the winter.”

“So their world was close to the sun that went supernova?”

“We assume.” White sounded impressed. “You’re very bright.”

“Which is why Christopher there isn’t ready to settle down with me, like Martini is. We’ve established that. I’m sort of the open book in this library, let’s not forget. No cracks,” I said, quickly, looking up at Martini. “I really want some answers.”

He nodded with fake solemnity, and White went on. “You’re right, there was plenty in the spaceship beyond books, and yes, we’ve been studying everything since the crash itself.”

There was something about the way he said the word “we” that made me stop. “You aren’t really with the American government, are you?”

“Well,” White said, as Martini gently but firmly took my arm and started me moving again, “we do have some American government people involved and in the know. But I told you already, we’re a world organization.”

“Which world?”

I could see I was right by the way White’s eyes shifted, just a bit. “In the car,” was all he said, though. The car was another gray limo; I decided they must be standard issue. It wasn’t the same one I’d been in before, which was a relief.

Christopher held the door to the back seats open for me, and I climbed in, humming the
Men in Black
theme song. I made sure I was in the forward-facing seat, so I could see the driver as well as the other passengers.

“They’re fictional,” Martini said. He got in and settled himself right next to me. “I’m real,” he added as he put his arm around my shoulders.

“Real annoying,” Christopher said as he closed the door after White and Gower, then climbed into the front passenger seat. I wasn’t sure I disagreed, though I didn’t protest about the arm or the fact that Martini had pulled me closer. I felt safer next to him for some reason, illogical or not.

Our usual driver and pilot took the wheel. “Care to tell me who this is?” I asked White.

“James Reader,” White answered, somewhat reluctantly I thought.

“I’m a human, like you,” Reader said, turning around and flashing me a toothy grin. “I actually
was
a male model, if you want an autograph.”

I felt my jaw drop. “Oh, my God, I recognize you! You did the big Calvin Klein spread a few years ago that raised so much controversy.”

“Which one was
that
?” Gower asked. “Isn’t controversial pretty much the definition of a Calvin Klein ad campaign?”

Reader grinned again. It was an awesome grin, making Martini’s seem just ordinary. “Mine had the
most
controversy. Then I retired at the height of my fame to pursue my passions. Which was the cover story for joining up with this crew.” He winked at me. “Don’t worry, babe. They’re okay. Odd in their way, but okay. I’ll look out for you, even keep the horndog here at bay if you want me to.”

“He really is gay,” Martini said.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let anyone hassle my homegirl here,” Reader said as he turned around. “We humans have to watch each other’s backs, or you aliens are gonna take all the credit for saving the world.” Reader started the car, and we drove off.

I looked out the windows—there were several gray SUVs moving out with us. “All the boys coming along?”

“All the ones here, yes,” White said. “We have to make sure you’re protected.”

“Um, why?”

“You were identified as stopping a terrorist, who the media have decided was part of the Al Dejahl terrorist organization,” Christopher answered in a clipped tone. I got the feeling Gower was right—he wasn’t happy about this screw up. “That’ll alert any superbeings who might be in control to the fact you’re a threat.”

“Great. So, what planet are you from?”

Gower was the one who answered, which I found interesting. “We can’t pronounce our native language here—humans can’t understand it.”

“Worse than Yiddish,” Martini added.

Gower rolled his eyes. “Jeff, shut up. We’re from the Alpha Centauri system. You call our suns Alpha Centauri A and B. We call them, well, the big sun and the little sun. And our world, the world. In our own language, of course. People are more alike than you’d realize, even people from different planets.”

“So, you’re saying you’re humans?” I was taking this very well and was rather proud of myself.

“No, only Earth has humans. There are real differences, significant ones.”

“We’re better in bed,” Martini whispered to me.

“Jeff!” Gower looked as fed up as he sounded. “Give it a rest for the whole five minutes it’ll take me to explain this.”

“Fine,” Martini sighed. He slid down in the seat a bit. “I’ll behave.”

Gower gave him a look that said he didn’t believe a word of it, then went on. “We were one of the planets the original aliens warned, just like Earth. We call the aliens Ancients, because their race was much older than ours. The ship that arrived at our planet didn’t crash, but the crew couldn’t survive in our atmosphere. The ones who landed here would have died as well. Their world, we’ve figured out, was a lot closer, spacewise, to the one the parasites came from than ours or yours, and it made them very different from our two races.”

“They reached our world a hundred years before yours,” White added. “We didn’t have good enough space travel to reach any other inhabited world for decades after they landed, though.”

Gower nodded. “We got most of what we needed from the Ancients’ spaceship. Just as Earth scientists did and are still doing today. But we’ve had more time than you.”

“Earth did a better job with translation,” Christopher added.

“True,” Gower agreed. “We were clear a menace was coming, and we could figure out that more worlds than ours were warned. They had a star map, and we used it to determine which worlds were the ones presumed in danger.”

“We came to Earth to help,” White added. “You needed us. You still do.”

“So these brilliant Ancients set out to warn all the worlds, and they don’t wear space suits? How stupid is that?” I felt bad for asking, but it had to be said.

“You go, girl,” Reader called from the driver’s seat. “That was my first question, too. You’ll love the answer.”

“They thought they could adapt,” Gower said in a resigned tone. “They were shapeshifters from all we can tell, and they’d been able to do it before. But their planet was closer to the galactic core than ours are, and things are different there than out here.”

“So how many planets is it safe to assume they couldn’t adapt to?” I felt a pang of pity for these Ancients, doing their best to save the galaxy and in a way failing before they could even begin.

“Most of them,” Gower said with a sigh. “Most of the inhabited planets are far from the core, not near it. We don’t know why. We’ve been too busy fighting to keep this threat at bay to do any form of exploration.”

“They might be figuring it out back home,” Martini added. “But we don’t know. Radio waves take forever to get through, so communications is pretty poor. None of us are going back, but we knew that coming here.” For the first time since I’d started this journey he didn’t look confident or happy—he looked lonely and sad.

“You leave a lot of family back there?” I asked quietly—it wasn’t a raucous moment.

“Not a lot. No wife,” he added with his normal smile.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Glad to see that moment of personal exposure wasn’t going to last longer than a nanosecond. Not that I could blame him. They might be aliens, but they were also clearly men.

“Most of us don’t have immediate family back on our home world,” Gower said. “Our families are here.”

“What do you mean, here?” This was getting weirder by the moment.

“We perfected a transference system, where we don’t need spaceships to get here,” White replied. “It works very well to send us from our home world to Earth.”

“But we can’t go back,” Christopher added. “Our world’s core is different from Earth’s; the magnetic pull here won’t allow the system to work in reverse. So, for some, it was better to send the whole clan out.”

“Why so? That seems odd, really.”