The Best of Connie Willis

by Connie Willis

  “We are never going to get that entrance right,” several of the choir members muttered as they gathered up their music, and the balding minister from last night, Reverend McIntyre, looked totally discouraged.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t sing after all,” he told Calvin.

  “Yes, you should,” Calvin said, and put his hand on Reverend McIntyre’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’ll all come together. You’ll see.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked Calvin after Reverend McIntyre had gone out.

  He laughed. “I know it’s hard to believe listening to them now. I never think they’re going to be able to do it, but somehow, no matter how awful they sound in rehearsal, they always manage to pull it off. It’s enough to restore your faith in humanity.” He frowned. “I thought you were going to come over, and we were going to look at frequency patterns.”

  “We are,” I said. “Why?”

  He pointed behind me. The Altairi were standing there with Reverend McIntyre. “I found them outside,” he said, smiling. “I was afraid they might be lost.”

  “Oh, dear, they must have followed me. I’m so sorry,” I said, though Reverend McIntyre didn’t seem particularly intimidated by them. I said as much.

  “I’m not,” he said. “They don’t look nearly as annoyed as my congregation does when they don’t approve of my sermon.”

  “I’d better take them back,” I said to Calvin.

  “No, as long as they’re here, we might as well take them over to my apartment and try some more songs on them. We need more data.”

  I somehow squeezed all six of them into my car and took them over to Calvin’s apartment, and he analyzed frequency patterns while I played some more songs for them. It definitely wasn’t the quality of the songs or the singers they were responding to. They wouldn’t sit down for Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper” and then did for a hideous falsetto children’s recording of “Little Miss Muffet” from the 1940s.

  It wasn’t the words’ meaning, either. When I played them “Adeste Fideles” in Latin, they sat down when the choir sang, “tibi sit gloria.”

  “Which proves they’re taking what they hear literally,” Calvin said when I took him into the kitchen out of earshot of the Altairi to tell me.

  “Yes, which means we’ve got to make sure they don’t hear any words that have double meanings,” I said. “We can’t even play them ‘Deck the Halls,’ for fear they might deck someone.”

  “And we definitely can’t play them ‘laid in a manger,’ ” he said, grinning.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “At this rate, we aren’t going to be able to play them anything.”

  “There must be some songs—”

  “What songs?” I said in frustration. “ ‘I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm’ talks about hearts that are on fire, ‘Christmastide’ might bring on a tsunami, and ‘be born in us today’ sounds like a scene out of Alien.”

  “I know,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find something. Here, I’ll help you.” He cleared off the kitchen table, brought in the stacks of sheet music, albums, and CDs, and sat me down across from him. “I’ll find songs and you check the lyrics.”

  We started through them. “No … no … what about ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’?”

  “No,” I said, looking up the lyrics. “It’s got ‘hate,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘dead,’ and ‘despair.’ ”

  “Cheery,” he said. There was a pause while we looked through more music. “John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas’?”

  I shook my head. “ ‘War.’ Also ‘fights’ and ‘fear.’ ”

  Another pause, and then he said, “All I want for Christmas is you.”

  I looked up at him, startled. “What did you say?”

  “ ‘All I Want for Christmas is You,’ ” he repeated. “Song title. Mariah Carey.”

  “Oh.” I looked up the lyrics. “I think it might be okay. I don’t see any murder or mayhem.” But he was shaking his head.

  “On second thought, I don’t think we’d better. Love can be even more dangerous than war.”

  I looked into the living room where the Altairi stood glaring through the door at me. “I seriously doubt they’re here to steal Earthwomen.”

  “Yeah, but we wouldn’t want to give anybody any ideas.”

  “No,” I said. “We definitely wouldn’t want to do that.”

  We went back to searching for songs. “How about ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’?” he said, holding up a Patti Page album.

  “I’ll Be Home” passed muster, but the Altairi didn’t respond to it, or to Ed Ames singing “Ballad of the Christmas Donkey” or Miss Piggy singing “Santa Baby.”

  There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their responses. The keys weren’t the same, or the notes, or the accompaniment. They responded to the Andrews Sisters but not to Randy Travis, and it wasn’t the voices, either, because they responded to Julie Andrews’s “Awake, Awake Ye Drowsy Souls.” We played them her “Silver Bells.” They didn’t laugh (which didn’t really surprise me) or bustle, but when the song got to the part about the traffic lights blinking red and green, all six of them blinked their eyes. We played them her “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.” They just sat there.

  “Try the ‘Christmas Waltz,’ ” I said, looking at the album cover.

  He shook his head. “It’s got love in it, too. You did say you didn’t have a boyfriend, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” I said, “and I have no intention of dating the Altairi.”

  “Good,” he said. “Can you think of any other songs with ‘blink’ in them?”

  By the time he left to rehearse with the symphony, we didn’t know any more than when we’d started. I took the Altairi back to Dr. Wakamura, who didn’t seem all that happy to see them, tried to find a song with “blink” in it, to no avail, had dinner, and went back over to Calvin’s apartment.

  He was already there, working. I started through the sheet music. “What about ‘Good Christian Men, Rejoice’?” I said. “It’s got ‘bow’ in it,” and the phone rang.

  Calvin answered it. “What is it, Belinda?” he said, listened a moment, and then said, “Meg, turn on the TV,” and handed me the remote.

  I switched on the television. Marvin the Martian was telling Bugs Bunny he planned to incinerate the earth. “CNN,” Calvin said. “It’s on forty.”

  I punched in the channel and then was sorry. Reverend Thresher was standing in the audio lab in front of a mob of reporters, saying, “—happy to announce that we have found the answer to the Altairi’s actions in the mall yesterday. Christmas carols were playing over the sound system in the mall—”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “I thought the surveillance tapes didn’t have any sound,” Calvin said.

  “They don’t. Someone else in the mall must have had a videocam.”

  “—and when the Altairi heard those holy songs,” Reverend Thresher was saying, “they were overcome by the truth of their message, by the power of God’s blessed word—”

  “Oh, no,” Calvin said.

  “—and they sank to the ground in repentance for their sins.”

  “They did not,” I said. “They sat down.”

  “For the past nine months, scientists have been seeking to discover the reason why the Altairi came to our planet. They should have turned to our Blessed Savior instead, for it is in Him that all answers lie. Why have the Altairi come here? To be saved! They’ve come to be born again, as we shall demonstrate.” He held up a CD of Christmas carols.

  “Oh, no!” we both said. I grabbed for my cell phone.

  “Like the wise men of old,” Reverend Thresher was saying, “they have come seeking Christ, which proves that Christianity is the only true religion.”

  Dr. Morthman took forever to answer his phone. When he did, I said, “Dr. Morthman, you mustn’t let the Altairi listen to any Christmas carols—”

  “I can’t talk now,” he said. “We’re
in the middle of a press conference,” and hung up.

  “Dr. Morthman—” I hit redial.

  “There’s no time for that.” Calvin, who’d snatched up his keys and my coat, said, “Come on, we’ll take my car,” and as we racketed downstairs, “There were a lot of reporters there, and he just said something that will make every Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and non-evangelical Christian on the planet go ballistic. If we’re lucky, he’ll still be answering questions when we get there.”

  “And if we’re not?”

  “The Altairi will be out seizing troubled minds, and we’ll have a holy war on our hands.”

  We almost made it. There were, as Calvin had predicted, a lot of questions, particularly after Reverend Thresher stated that the Altairi agreed with him on abortion, gay marriage, and the necessity of electing Republicans to all political offices in the next election.

  But the clamoring reporters clogging the steps, the door, and the hall made it nearly impossible to get through, and by the time we reached the audio lab, Reverend Thresher was pointing proudly to the Altairi kneeling on the other side of the one-way mirror and telling the reporters, “As you can see, their hearing the Christmas message has made them kneel in reverence—”

  “Oh, no, they must be listening to ‘O Holy Night,’ ” I said, “or ‘As with Gladness Men of Old.’ ”

  “What did you play them?” Calvin demanded. He pointed at the kneeling Altairi.

  “The One True Way Maxichurch Christmas CD,” Reverend Thresher said proudly, holding up the case, which the reporters obligingly snapped, filmed, and downloaded to their iPods. “Christmas Carols for True Christians.”

  “No, no, what song?”

  “Do the individual carols hold a special significance for them?” the reporters were shouting, and “What carol were they listening to in the mall?” and “Have they been baptized, Reverend Thresher?” while I tried to tell Dr. Morthman, “You’ve got to turn the music off.”

  “Off?” Dr. Morthman said incredulously, yelling to be heard over the reporters. “Just when we’re finally making progress communicating with the Altairi?”

  “You have to tell us which songs you’ve played!” Calvin shouted.

  “Who are you?” Reverend Thresher demanded.

  “He’s with me,” I said, and to Dr. Morthman, “You have to turn it off right now. Some of the carols are dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” he bellowed, and the reporters’ attention swiveled to us.

  “What do you mean, dangerous?” they asked.

  “I mean dangerous,” Calvin said. “The Altairi aren’t repenting of anything. They’re—”

  “How dare you accuse the Altairi of not being born again?” Reverend Thresher said. “I saw them respond to the hymnwriter’s inspiring words with my own eyes, saw them fall on their knees—”

  “They responded to ‘Silver Bells,’ too,” I said, “and to ‘The Hanukkah Song.’ ”

  “ ‘The Hanukkah Song?’ ” the reporters said, and began pelting us with questions again. “Does that mean they’re Jewish?” “Orthodox or Reformed?” “What’s their response to Hindu chants?”

  “What about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Do they respond to that?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with religion,” Calvin said. “The Altairi are responding to the literal meaning of certain words in the songs. Some of the words they’re listening to right now could be dangerous for them to—”

  “Blasphemy!” Reverend Thresher bellowed. “How could the blessed Christmas message be dangerous?”

  “ ‘Christmas Day Is Come’ tells them to slay young children,” I said, “and the lyrics of other carols have blood and war and stars raining fire. That’s why you’ve got to turn off the music right now.”

  “Too late,” Calvin said and pointed through the one-way mirror.

  The Altairi weren’t there. “Where are they?” the reporters began shouting. “Where did they go?” and Reverend Thresher and Dr. Morthman both turned to me and demanded to know what I’d done with them.

  “Leave her alone. She doesn’t know where they are any more than you do,” Calvin said in his choir director voice.

  The effect on the room was the same as it had been on his seventh-graders. Dr. Morthman let go of me, and the reporters shut up. “Now, what song were you playing?” Calvin said to Reverend Thresher.

  “ ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,’ ” Reverend Thresher said, “but it’s one of the oldest and most beloved Christmas carols. It’s ridiculous to think hearing it could endanger anyone—”

  “Is ‘God Rest Ye’ why they left?” the reporters were shouting, and “What are the words? Is there any war in it? Or children-slaying?”

  “ ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen,’ ” I muttered under my breath, trying to remember the lyrics, “ ‘let nothing you dismay …’ ”

  “Where did they go?” the reporters clamored.

  “ ‘… oh, tidings of comfort and joy,’ ” I murmured. I glanced over at Calvin. He was doing the same thing I was. “ ‘… to save us all … when we are gone …’ ”

  “Where do you think they’ve gone?” a reporter called out.

  Calvin looked at me. “Astray,” he said grimly.

  The Altairi weren’t in the other labs, in any of the other buildings on campus, or in their ship. Or at least no one had seen the ramp to it come down and them go inside. No one had seen them crossing the campus, either, or on the surrounding streets.

  “I hold you entirely responsible for this, Miss Yates,” Dr. Morthman said. “Send out an APB,” he told the police. “And put out an Amber Alert.”

  “That’s for when a child’s been kidnapped,” I said. “The Altairi haven’t—”

  “We don’t know that,” he snapped. He turned back to the police officer. “And call the FBI.”

  The police officer turned to Calvin. “Dr. Morthman said you said the aliens were responding to the words, ‘gone astray.’ Were there any other words in the song that are dangerous?”

  “Sa—” I began.

  “No,” Calvin said and, while Dr. Morthman was telling the officer to call Homeland Security and tell them to declare a Code Red, hustled me down the sidewalk and behind the Altairi’s ship.

  “Why did you tell them that?” I demanded. “What about ‘scorn’? What about ‘Satan’s power’?”

  “Shh,” he whispered. “He’s already calling Homeland Security. We don’t want him to call out the Air Force. And the nukes,” he said. “And there’s no time to explain things to them. We’ve got to find the Altairi.”

  “Do you have any idea where they could have gone?”

  “No. At least their ship’s still here,” he said, looking over at it.

  I wasn’t sure that meant anything, considering the Altairi had been able to get out of a lab with a locked door. I said as much, and Calvin agreed. “ ‘Gone astray’ may not even be what they were responding to. They may be off looking for a manger or shepherds. And there are different versions. Christmas Carols for True Christians may have used an older one.”

  “In which case we need to go back to the lab and find out exactly what it was they heard,” I said, my heart sinking. Dr. Morthman was likely to have me arrested.

  Apparently Calvin had reached the same conclusion, because he said, “We can’t go back in there. It’s too risky, and we’ve got to find the Altairi before Reverend Thresher does. There’s no telling what he’ll play them next.”

  “But how—?”

  “If they did go astray, then they may still be in the area. You go get your car and check the streets north of the campus, and I’ll do south. Do you have your cell phone?”

  “Yes, but I don’t have a car. Mine’s at your apartment. We came over in yours, remember?”

  “What about the van you use to take the Altairi places in?”

  “But won’t that be awfully noticeable?”

  “They’re looking for six aliens on foot, not in a van,” he
said, “and besides, if you find them, you’ll need something to put them in.”

  “You’re right,” I said and took off for the faculty parking lot, hoping Dr. Morthman hadn’t had the same idea.

  He hadn’t. The parking lot was deserted. I slid the van’s back door open, half-hoping this was the Altairi’s idea of astray, but they weren’t inside, or on any of the streets for an area two miles north of DU. I drove up University Boulevard and then slowly up and down the side streets, terrified I’d find them squished on the pavement.

  It was already dark. I called Calvin. “No sign of them,” I told him. “Maybe they went back to the mall. I’m going to go over there and—”

  “No, don’t do that,” he said. “Dr. Morthman and the FBI are there. I’m watching it on CNN. They’re searching Victoria’s Secret. Besides, the Altairi aren’t there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they’re here at my apartment.”

  “They are?” I said, weak with relief. “Where did you find them?”

  He didn’t answer me. “Don’t take any major streets on your way over here,” he said. “And park in the alley.”

  “Why? What have they done?” I asked, but he’d already hung up.

  The Altairi were standing in the middle of Calvin’s living room when I got there. “I came back here to check on alternate lyrics for ‘God Rest Ye’ and found them waiting for me,” Calvin explained. “Did you park in the alley?”

  “Yes, at the other end of the block. What have they done?” I repeated, almost afraid to ask.

  “Nothing. At least nothing that’s been on CNN,” he said, gesturing at the TV, which was showing the police searching the candle store. He had the sound turned down, but across the bottom of the screen was the logo “Aliens AWOL.”

  “Then why all the secrecy?”

  “Because we can’t afford to let them find the Altairi till we’ve figured out why they’re doing what they’re doing. Next time it might not be as harmless as going astray. And we can’t go to your apartment. They know where you live. We’re going to have to hole up here. Did you tell anybody you were working with me?”