Aliens Abroad

by Gini Koch

  Other animals, stuffed and figurines both, started floating around the room. “Charlie, sweetheart, please put your toys back where they belong. Mommy has gotten the hint and I’ll do my best to get us to the Happiest Place on Earth as soon as we can.”

  The toys floated away. Charlie shrugged. “It’s not the happiest place right now, Mommy. But you can fix it.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be happy the moment we’re there.”

  Jamie and Charlie both nodded. “Maybe not the exact moment, Mommy,” Jamie said earnestly. “But soon after. I think.”

  Would have asked her just what she was talking about, but Akiko lost patience and shooed Nadine and the kids out of the room so the Prep Team could finish getting me ready to go.

  We finished up and, as we did, the intercom went live. “Excuse me Chief First Lady,” Walter Ward, head of White House Security, the dude most dedicated to the job bar none, and the biggest slave to titles ever discovered, said, “but there’s a package for you.”

  “Um, hey, Walt. Thanks for the heads-up. Why are you telling me this instead of having someone deliver it to me?”

  “Ah . . . because it’s not a normal package.”

  CHAPTER 4

  LET THAT ONE SIT on the air for a moment. “Um, so, we’re all breathless with anticipation over here now, Walt. How is said package not normal?”

  “It’s alive.”

  “Am I done here?” I asked the Prep Team.

  “Yes,” Pierre said. “Just please don’t do anything to wreck your clothes.”

  “Oh, I have spares,” Akiko said cheerfully. “You’re good.”

  “Walt, where is the living package and did it arrive via conventional means or like the Peregrines did during Operation Destruction?” Otherwise known as in Special Space Delivery boxes that were not, but definitely should have been, marked Handle With Extreme Caution.

  “With me, and via somewhat conventional means. The deliverer is with me, too.”

  “The suspense builds. I’ll ask you why you’re being so coy when I get there. Com off.”

  Listened. Didn’t hear the low hum indicating the com was still live. Good, Walter had picked up that clue, not that I’d had a doubt. Hoped my telling him to turn off the com indicated that I’d picked up his clues as well.

  Considered options. Getting my children to safety and others advised were definitely Jobs One and Two. “Colette, find Nadine and get her and the kids to the Embassy, along with Pierre and Akiko. Francine, I want you to very quietly but very quickly advise everyone with the President that we have a potential invader situation.”

  Francine and Colette both nodded and did the hyperspeed disappearing act.

  “What will I be doing?” Vance asked.

  “You will be coming with me.”

  “Oh. Good,” he said in a tone indicating this was the opposite of good. “You’re sure I can’t warn Jeff and the others? Or go protect the kids at the Embassy?”

  “I’m sure that I will be yelled at should I go somewhere without someone acting as a bodyguard. I have no idea where Len and Kyle happen to be, my Secret Service detail is likely wherever Len and Kyle are, and the whereabouts of Team Tough Guys is an equal mystery. For all I know, they’re all already with Walter. They could be in the Rose Garden. However, where they are not is here, with me, and that means that you are coming with me so that I can show that I wasn’t totally reckless.”

  With that, I grabbed Vance’s hand and used some hyperspeed myself to take us to Walter’s security nest.

  Walter had been the Head of Security when we were at the American Centaurion Embassy, and while he did the same job now at the White House, technically he was serving several masters, including his older brother, William, who was Head of Security for all of American Centaurion and who based out of the Dulce Science Center in New Mexico.

  Walter’s other main master was Malcolm Buchanan, who’d been assigned to protect me and Jamie by the Head of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit, aka my mother, when we’d first gotten to D.C. and who was now the head of Team Tough Guys and charged with protecting me, the kids, and, when necessary, Jeff and anyone else we cared about. Jeff had made Buchanan the official Head of White House Security, but since Buchanan worked best in and preferred the shadows, Walter was who was shown to the public as being the Head Security Dude. Meaning that Walter, like so many of us, had a target on him.

  We reached Walter’s White House Security Command Center quickly—I still sucked at mazes but we’d been here long enough that I actually knew my way around, at least enough to make do under normal circumstances.

  The room was set up like security rooms at every other Centaurion Base—so, nothing like what a normal human would do. Due to the original Head of Security, the late Gladys Gower who’d been a rare dream reader and empath combination, Security A-Cs were expected to sleep on the job, but with one eye open, so to speak—the top dawgs in particular.

  This had been great when Gladys was alive, since she’d actually been able to spot threats in her sleep. For everyone else, however, it wasn’t as good. William was an imageer—our third most powerful after Christopher and Serene—but Walter had no talents, other than being the most dedicated follower of titles fashion. And no one in any of our top Security positions was a dream reader, let alone a combination of talents.

  So, naturally, I’d suggested that the Security teams stop trying to function 24/7 and actually share responsibilities. And that suggestion had been soundly ignored for the past several years, and I saw no end to its streak.

  Dulce’s Security Command Center had several bedrooms connected to the futuristic eye-in-the-sky technology that was an A-C standard. Walter, however, had been a one-man operation at the Embassy, and he continued to be so at the White House as well. He had a large suite with a comfy chair I was certain he slept in at his main controls, and a minicommand set up in the other room next to his bed.

  What he also had with him today was a large animal crate and a person. The crate was one of the nicest I’d ever seen, clearly top of the line, and it was filled with what looked like a lot of ferrets, only I knew they weren’t ferrets.

  “Are those least weasels?” I’d dragged Chuckie into every animal sciences course offered at ASU and I’d always gotten the top grades, even higher than he did. Animals were my “thing” and, these days, in more ways than one.

  The animals all turned at the sound of my voice. They were a family group, mom, dad, and six kits, and they were in winter white coats which, considering what I remembered of the mating habits of least weasels—and it would have shocked everyone other than Chuckie that I remembered quite a lot—these kits had already reached maturity. Meaning they shouldn’t be with mom and dad any longer. And yet, they seemed quite happy to be together.

  They were also quite happy to see me. I received an outpouring of love and loyalty that I was used to from my own vast menagerie but not necessarily from strange, new animals. And yet, this family was declaring its total love and devotion to all things me.

  Could tell this because I had those Dr. Doolittle talents and they extended to all animals. I’d talked to ancient not-originally-from-this-planet sea slugs and alien cat-foxes and pig-dogs, and everything in between. I could only understand them a hundred percent if they wanted me to, but I could always pick up at least something. And in this case, I was picking up everything.

  Least weasel declarations of faith and fidelity received, I shared that as long as they got along nicely with all the others in the menagerie they were more than welcome to hang out. Then I took a look at the person with them.

  A handsome dwarf with tousled curly dark hair, bright green eyes, and a rakish demeanor grinned at me. He was dressed in what looked like some sort of bizarre getup that combined styles from the past several hundred years—jaunty green cap with a feather that might have been from a peacock but
I was sure was from a Peregrine, dark blue velvet lederhosen complete with suspenders decorated with tiny yet accurate images of the cosmos, a frilly puffy white shirt, a sleeveless vest that could have been made out of long sheep’s wool but looked a lot more like long Poof fur to me, and silver-buckled men’s high-heeled shoes.

  Despite my best efforts, my jaw dropped. It didn’t faze him.

  Instead, he whipped off his cap and gave me a deep bow. “Madam First Lady and Queen Regent of Earth, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Al Garrison of the Sovereign Nation of Algarria, and I am here to end the war between our peoples.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I STOOD THERE WITH MY mouth hanging open. Literally, I had no idea what to say. Or what to ask.

  For starters, I wanted to ask what the hell was going on. Then to ask what Algar—because that was definitely who this was standing before me—was up to. And then I wanted to ask where in the world Algarria was, and what war they’d declared upon us. But the shock of seeing Algar like this and in this way had me speechless. Was glad no one other than Walter and Vance were around to witness the situation.

  Vance beat me to the punch. “Excuse me? Who did you say you are?”

  Algar stood up and put his hat back on. “I am Al Garrison, the Royal Sovereign of Algarria, a nation that, possibly until today, is at war with the United States. And I come to seek an audience with the First Lady on important matters of state.”

  “Algarria is a micronation,” Walter said quietly. “There are about four hundred of them, so that’s why you’re having trouble placing which one this is, Chief First Lady.”

  Managed not to say that I sincerely doubted that Algarria actually existed. Because Algar was about as far from human as you could get.

  Algar was from the Black Hole Universe, and he was the one who’d brought the Poofs to this one. The Poofs were small bundles of adorable cuteness, with tiny paws, black button eyes, and tails and ears you could rarely see because of how fluffy their fur was. Originally we’d been told they were from Alpha Four and mated whenever a Royal Wedding was in the offing. Reality said that the Poofs either felt that everyone Jeff and I had ever met or heard of was royalty or else they just liked to get busy, because every friend of ours—as determined to be a friend by the Poofs—had at least one Poof of their own, and Jeff and I had a lot of unattached Poofs who lived with us. Poofs for everyone and more Poofs for me remained my life’s motto.

  In addition to being the Poof Breeding Originator, Algar was a Free Will Fanatic of the highest order. Which went against what the Black Hole People stood for, from all he’d told me. Algar had been on the run for Crimes Against Allowing the Younger Races to Screw Up for longer than I could comprehend and, based on how long he’d been around, it was a safe bet that every race in our universe was considered younger.

  He’d attached to the Royal Family of Alpha Four—of which Jeff was a member, as we’d discovered during Operation Invasion—hundreds of years prior and had basically never left them. When some of them, Jeff’s father Alfred included, had been banished to Earth, Algar had gone along. By that time, Algar had distanced himself from the current rulers to the point they didn’t know he existed, though Alfred was named for him. Alfred didn’t know about Algar, either. Almost no one did. As far as I knew, Richard White and Gower—the former and current Supreme Pontifex—and I were the only ones. Though I’d discovered at the end of Operation Fundraiser that Siler had started to figure it out.

  Algar’s powers were like magic to those of us here. He snapped his fingers and whatever he wanted happened. He had the entire A-C population believing that there were hundreds if not thousands of A-Cs doing the work of the Operations Team—cleaning, rearranging, moving things and people, food and clothing supplies, and on and on—when, in fact, it was all him. He’d turned every refrigerator into a portal. He’d turned my purse and the rolling computer bag he’d given me into portals, too.

  And this was because I was, apparently, his favorite. Many times I felt lucky about this. Today was not one of those times.

  “Why are you bringing in a family of least weasels?” Admittedly, this wasn’t the best opening line I could have come up with, but it was all I had, in no small part because Algar prevented any of us talking about him aloud and also shielded our minds so others couldn’t “see” us thinking about him telepathically. I had no idea if my children knew Algar existed, though I knew ACE did.

  Algar smiled. “They’re the royal mascot of Algarria and a gift for you, Madame First Lady. Or do you prefer to be called Queen Katherine?”

  “Neither, I prefer to be called Kitty. I’m sorry, I’m really confused right now.”

  “I’m here to broker a peace treaty with the United States, to end the war between our two nations. This family of least weasels are Algarria’s gift to you and the start of our new friendship.”

  “You’re expecting an invitation to the President’s address due to this, aren’t you?” Vance asked.

  Algar beamed. “I am, and thank you so much for confirming it! Algarria, and our Brotherhood of Nations, will look favorably upon the United States for showing us such favor.”

  Thought fast, possibly faster than I’d ever thought before. There had to be a reason Algar was doing this and grins and giggles wasn’t it. Therefore, I could make this easier or I could be really stupid and obtuse and not help our personal God in the Machine to achieve whatever the hell he needed achieved.

  Vance’s mouth was opening, and I didn’t have to have Black Hole Universe powers to guess that his reply wasn’t going to be “come on down” or anything else positive. Micronations weren’t something that the U.S., or any other reasonably sane country, cared about.

  “I’m sure we can include you. What title do you prefer that we use for you?”

  “Ard Ri will be acceptable, lassie.”

  Knew this translated into High King in Gaelic, not because I was up on the language but because one of my BFFs from high school, Sheila, had been all about the languages, and this was one of the many things she’d told me that had stuck. Realistically and based on powers alone, Algar was a higher king than anyone in our galaxy. But in terms of the title, and knowing him as I did, had to figure that he was merely enjoying the joke of making everyone call him a high king, rather than feeling that he was.

  “That would be Madame First Lady or Queen Katherine,” Vance snapped. “If we’re calling you Ard Ri, Mister Garrison.” Clearly Vance knew some Gaelic, too. Also clearly, he wasn’t pleased with this turn of events.

  “Oh, but she said to be informal, laddie,” Algar said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Ard Ri Al it is,” I said before Vance could give the cutting retort I could see forming.

  Algar chuckled. “That will be acceptable. Now, do you accept Algarria’s offer of a family of our most precious royal pets, or do you not?”

  “I do.”

  “And will you keep them with you at all times?” Algar was staring right into my eyes.

  Not that I needed the hint. For whatever reason, Algar felt that I needed to have eight least weasels hanging about. So least weasels I would have. “Yes, I will.”

  “Good. We’ll put them into their standard traveling coach for the speech.” Algar trotted over to the crate while Vance and I both stared at each other.

  “Um . . .” I was again at a loss for words. Because I’d stupidly thought that Algar had meant keep the least weasels with the rest of the animals or in our bedroom or something.

  Vance recovered first. “We can’t have the First Lady hauling rodents with her to the President’s speech.” He didn’t have to say the words “career death” aloud—I knew what the press would do with the idea of me trotting around with some least weasels like they were corgis, even the press who liked us.

  Then again, I trotted around with Poofs and Peregrines all the time. The Poofs usually
hung out in my purse and the Peregrines were able to go chameleon, so most people didn’t know they were there. Possibly and perhaps I could do similar with the least weasels.

  “They’re mustelidae, Vance, meaning they’re a lot like the sentient beings from Beta Eight. Meaning that we have to be careful not to insult any of our allies, Ard Ri Al, by carrying around smaller versions of themselves as pets.” Or whatever they were actually supposed to be.

  I didn’t say less sentient—I’d been shown quite clearly over the past few years that all the animals I had hanging about, both Earth native and interplanetary galactic, were all smart. They might not think and reason like humans, but stupid they were not.

  Algar turned around, holding what I could only think of as a large, blue, velvet hatbox with airholes in it. “They won’t notice them, lassie. At least, as long as you keep them with you.”

  I gave up and heaved a sigh as I reached for the Royal Least Weasel Hatbox Carrier. “Gotcha. What are their names?”

  “Oh, they’re for you to name.”

  “Of course they are. What do they eat?”

  He shot a smirk at Vance. “Rodents. Among other things. They’re carnivores.”

  “Just like all the rest of our animals. They’ll fit right in.” The carrier wasn’t too heavy, which was nice. Contemplated how I’d explain this to everyone. Decided not to. “So . . . guys . . . what say we don’t share that we have a family of least weasels with us? At least until after Jeff’s speech and all the rest of that dog and pony show.”

  “You want me to lie, Chief First Lady?” Walter sounded unsure that he could.

  “You’ve managed before, Walt. When the stakes were high enough.”