In other words, there was no way to commercialize starlight.
On top of that, in order for it to work—according to Cotton—one had to appear naked under the stars. That was pretty much a deal-breaker for everybody.
As was often the case with self-proclaimed geniuses, the lack of enthusiasm for his theories just emboldened Cotton to try harder to prove he was right, which was why, as of 1841, the tiny, barely functional Wainwright College—by then up to seven buildings—had the largest refractory telescope in the country.
More than any of Cotton’s theories regarding God and starlight, it was the telescope that ensured the continued existence of Wainwright College. A piece of state-of-the-art astronomical equipment atop an isolated hill owned wholly by the college itself was a very attractive commodity.
Cotton had it built because he thought he could scan the night sky for the actual, non-metaphorical (because, again, he didn’t understand metaphors) eyeball of God staring back at him, but once he died everyone at the college did their very best to ignore this detail. Mostly, they succeeded. There was one tiny problem: The land on which Wainwright College sat still belonged to the Wainwright family. Per Cotton’s last will and testament, the school was permitted the continued use of that land provided they carried on his quest for “conclusive proof of God’s manifest beneficence in the sky.”
For many years, the college’s board of directors interpreted this mandate literally, and used the telescope only to look for things that kind of looked like they might be God. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work out, but it did result in a lot of entertainingly convoluted justifications for basic scientific research. Over the years, though, the emphasis on what came to be called Eye of God searches lessened and nearly stopped.
Sometime in the 1980’s, this obscure coda to Cotton Wainwright’s will was rediscovered by members of the student body who thought it was a shame that the college stopped adhering to the God-quest mandate. Petitions were signed asking the board to re-establish it. The response was swift and complete: The college was still doing it, they just didn’t tell anyone about it because it was embarrassing.
Thus was born Eye-of-God Weekend, a festival event in April timed to coincide with the running of the Boston Marathon on the subsequent Monday. (The marathon route went by campus, sort of. One had to walk downhill along a couple of residential side streets to reach it.) The origins of this choice in scheduling were not known. Possibly, it was assumed that both events involved spectating while drinking alcohol, and therefore belonged together.
Annie would never admit this to anyone, but Eye-of-God Weekend was a big selling point. Cotton Wainwright reminded her of Josiah Foster Sorrow, only without the non-consensual sex and syphilis. She was especially interested—although she had no idea why this particular component appealed to her—in the Saturday overnight in the observatory. There was something about lying in a sleeping bag on a stone floor in a room with a giant telescope that sounded cool, and possibly Authentically Collegial in some way. She assumed it was going to end up being something not half as awesome as it sounded, but decided she’d rather discover that for herself.
If she could get in. It turned out space was limited and interest was high.
One of the things she’d learned early on—at registration—was that the most interesting-sounding things (classes, in this case) were the ones that filled up first, and freshmen were the last ones to register. A pet spaceship could get her into the White House, but not into a popular elective on gothic literature.
But it could get her into the overnight at the observatory, apparently. She’d been told it was a random lottery system with weighted chances favoring upperclassmen, and that was probably mostly true. But twenty-five students got in, and she was one of only two in her class. It was a little hard to believe she was just that lucky.
“Are you sure about this?” Cora asked.
They were standing at the edge of a PG-rated bacchanal on the hillside leading up to the Wainwright Observatory. The observatory was a round structure at the top of a treeless hill, surrounded on all sides by heavily trampled grass. On that grass was a large portion of the student body, milling around and imbibing fully sanctioned non-alcoholic drinks. There were also dozens of tables featuring an unsavory combination of student club representatives and commercial outreaches. Annie was only a few feet away from the opportunity to apply for a credit card, open a new bank account, register to vote, join an ultimate Frisbee league, sign a petition to save whales or African children, lobby for more low-income housing or free contraceptives, and download a new social media app. And there was more on the blind side of the hill.
“Why,” Annie asked. “Is the van worried?”
“The van’s always worried, but this is me talking, not them.”
“Crowds always make you anxious,” Annie said. “Remember when you almost took down that Greenpeace guy?”
“That’s unfair,” Cora said, “he was much too aggressive.”
“We’re fine. You guys must have backgrounds on the whole campus by now, right?”
“We didn’t screen everyone in the school, no,” Cora said. “You already know that. We don’t have that kind of bandwidth.”
“Well don’t worry anyway,” Annie said.” C’mon.”
It was a good hour of meandering to reach the door of the observatory. On the way, Annie added herself to the mailing list for the student-run improv troupe, registered to vote, and listened to ten minutes of an alt-rock cover band whose lead guitar wasn’t loud enough and singer was too loud, and largely off-key. She added did not vaporize musicians in a fit of pique to her list of weekend accomplishments.
It was close to sundown. Annie didn’t know if the outdoor festivities continued past that point, but doubted it. The external lighting wasn’t really adequate, there were bugs, and the conspicuous lack of alcohol would undoubtedly have to be remedied in nearby dorm rooms.
Annie had not, in her brief time in college, gone to a lot of keg parties. She liked to think it wasn’t something she would have done regardless of the unusual circumstances that led her to this point. That is, if the ship was still sitting in the field, or had never landed in the first place, and she went off to college as planned, she didn’t think that version of Annie Collins would be the kind to end up drinking unreasonable quantities of beer.
There were a lot of reasons for it. That she didn’t really like beer was a big one. Wine also didn’t do much for her. On a couple of occasions, she’d had an opportunity to try a ‘girlie drink’: something sweet and chilled and with a lot more alcohol content than either beer or wine. She enjoyed those enough to discover what it was like to have a buzz, and also what it was like to have a hangover. That was a bad day for everyone, including the military high command.
“Hi!” the perky woman at the table said, perkily. “Checking in? Name?”
The table was just on the inside of the observatory doorway, with a student behind it, and a list in front of her. As it happened, Annie knew every name on the list, and so did the Secret Service, because one of the names not on the list was Cora Blankenship.
“Annie Collins.”
The student looked up. She was a pretty brunette with big oval glasses, in a tank-top and pants.
“Oh, right!” she said. “Hi, I’m Tammy. This is my shindig.”
“Cool gig,” Annie said.
“It’s a short-straw sort of deal, actually.”
“Oh, I don’t know, this all looks like a lot of fun.”
Tammy looked pained.
“Maybe out there,” she said.
The overnight in the observatory was run by the astronomy club, which seemed appropriate given the evening would be devoted to using a large piece of equipment, the use of which required a certain basic know-how. That meant students like Tammy got to watch the whole campus show only an ironic interest in something they liked non-ironically.
“Yeah, I get you,” Annie said. “They’re kinda goofin
g on the whole thing.”
“Tonight’s more fun than anything out there,” Tammy said. “I mean, in my opinion. I’m probably biased. Anyway, it’s great meeting you. You can go on in.”
She turned to Cora.
“Name?” she asked.
“Oh, she won’t be staying,” Annie said.
“No, but I have some questions,” Cora said.
“Okay,” Tammy said, clearly confused.
“What kind of security do you have here?”
“All the doors are locked, is that what you mean? Except this one and the big room.”
There were two doors of note: the set Annie and Cora walked through, and the ones on the other side of the antechamber, which led to the room with the big telescope. Whatever else was in the building was along the corridor which circled the telescope room.
“But what if someone just walked past you here?” Cora asked.
“They’re not supposed to come in unless they’re on the list. I’m sorry, are you… who are you?”
“This is Cora,” Annie said, as if this would help.
“Agent Blankenship,” Cora clarified.
“Oh. Oh! All right. Wow.”
Tammy’s eyes kept darting back and forth between them.
“It’s a thing,” Annie said. “Sorry.”
“So, um… agent, the only people allowed into the observatory today are people on the list, so if someone comes in who isn’t on the list, I tell them they can’t come in.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t look like you could stop anybody who really wanted to come in,” Cora said.
“I guess, but, nobody’s done that.”
“How about yesterday? Is the observatory usually locked? How many people have keys?”
“Are you thinking someone came in a day ago and camped out so they could crash tonight?” Tammy asked. “It’s not really that kind of event. I mean there’s a lottery and all but it’s just not, you know, a hole up under the staircase sort of thing.”
“Cora, the attendees aren’t public,” Annie said. “I don’t think anyone could have planned all that far ahead.”
Annie only received news that she was accepted two days prior, by email, which was enough time for the Service to petition the astronomy club for a copy of the list so they could review who was going to be there. The implication was that there were certain members of the student body who they considered red flags, which was something Annie thought she’d have to demand details about at some point in the future.
“How about when you have to go to the bathroom?” Cora asked Tammy.
“I put up a be-right-back sign.”
“Right.”
“The bathroom’s just right over there.”
Cora stepped away and started talking in hushed tones on her personal microphone.
Tammy looked distressed.
“I pee pretty fast,” she said to Annie.
“Don’t worry about it, they’re professional paranoids.”
Cora turned back around.
“We’re going to have to search the place,” she said to Tammy. “Can you get me someone with keys?”
What happened next would probably have been profoundly embarrassing if Annie weren’t so used to it, and if she had a more robust sense of shame. It was awkward, definitely, and at times a little silly.
Tammy was the one with the keys, but to walk Cora around she had to leave her post at the door, which would have created the exact problem they were attempting to resolve. Annie offered to watch the door and check people in, but the offer was reluctant, because she sort of wanted the tour that was implicit in having somebody with keys go room-to-room through the entire building. That was a no-go anyway, for the same basic reason as asking Tammy to leave the table unmanned: Annie would be alone at the front door for a while. Annie stopped short of suggesting agent Yount join her, because again, she didn’t want to actually do it.
What happened instead was that another person from the astronomy club got called in. This meant half an hour where Cora and Annie stood in the antechamber next to an increasingly flummoxed Tammy, while waiting for him to show. In that time, five people turned up whose names were on the list, and who suddenly had to provide their student ID’s before getting in. Considering everyone took this news with surprise—two had to go get theirs and come back—Annie was pretty sure Tammy invented this requirement on the spot.
The guy who showed up introduced himself as Duke, a name Annie previously associated entirely with John Wayne, and border collies. He was a gangly kind of tall and aggressively thin, and looked like he should be one of those people who move about awkwardly, spilling things by accident and tripping on tiny creases in the carpet. He was, instead, surprisingly graceful. Annie immediately decided she liked him, before he even spoke. She wouldn’t have been able to provide an explanation for why that was. Some people just felt like members of the same tribe.
Duke listened carefully to Cora’s concern, expressed in a quiet mutter that Annie wasn’t privy to but didn’t really need to hear, while shooting the occasional glance over at Annie.
“To recap,” he said, “you want to check every inch of the building for assassins. We can do that. If we find one, are you going to kill him, or am I supposed to?”
“Mr. Clementine…” Cora said.
“No, no, I can totally do that, but I’ll have to go back to my room to get my sword. I wasn’t expecting combat today.”
“We just have to clear the building.”
“I understand. Should we chain her down after? Because I think we do have those.”
“Sorry, hang on,” Annie said. “Are you telling me your full name is Duke Clementine? Please tell me I have that wrong.”
“Oh, no, that’s not my real name, it’s an alias. My real name is Justin Trombony, but you can’t tell anybody that.”
“I think I like Duke Clementine better.”
“Cool. Duke is supposed to be short for Dukakis, because my parents hated me. Anyway, I’m open to suggestions. We can rename you too. I bet walking around with the same name as a famous person is exhausting.”
“But I am that famous person.”
“You don’t have to be. Um, how about, Clytemnestra Jenkins?”
Annie laughed.
“Love it. Let’s do it.” She looked at Cora. “You guys can go home, I’m not Annie Collins anymore.”
Cora was busy rolling her eyeballs right out of her skull.
“How about that tour?” Cora said. It was addressed to Duke, but she was looking at Annie when she said it. “Then I can get out of everyone’s way.”
The observatory was actually more like two buildings. One was the center room where the telescope actually sat. It was a traditional dome structure, which made a lot of sense, given the whole roof turned when the telescope did. The second building was primarily a long, tall corridor with doors to offices on the outer side of the ring and doors to the telescope room on the inner side.
Duke appeared to decide early on that this was a singularly uninteresting building—true, except for the telescope itself—and so took it upon himself to embellish the contents of each room prior to opening the door that led to said room.
The eight doors led to three private offices, a storage room, a janitor closet, the office belonging to the astronomy club, and the observatory’s only two bathrooms. If Duke was to be believed, however, the observatory had: a sauna; a room containing precisely detailed dioramas of life in Racine, Wisconsin, circa 1997; the lower intestines of famous mathematicians; Santa Claus; a storage space for spare javelins; a scale model of famous black holes; and the observatory’s only two bathrooms, which were ultimately too difficult to embellish.
The good news was that there were no assassins, and also no people not already accounted for on Tammy’s list of attendees.
“So that’s it,” Duke said. “Except for the people bringing in the keg later, but they won’t stay. And we decided to skip the exotic dan
cers this year.”
“Aw, how come?” Annie asked.
“They kept distracting the jugglers, and there were chainsaws involved. It was bad. Which is why we also don’t have jugglers this year.” He turned to Cora, looking slightly more serious. “You checked on all the attendees, didn’t you? Tammy sent a list?”
“Yes, we already did that.”
“Okay, because I’m not on that list.”
“I assume that means you won’t be attending,” Cora said.
“I kind of have an open invitation. Everyone in the astronomy club does. It’s not official, but as you already know, I have a key to the building, so I consider that a sort of invite. I hadn’t been planning on coming, but now… I mean, if you’re worried about Clytemnestra here, I can keep an eye on her.”
Cora looked like this was the worst idea she’d ever heard.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” she said.
“Like I said, I can run back and get my sword.”
“Do you really have a sword?” Annie asked.
“I do. Well, no, I don’t. What I have is a foam cosplay sword, but it plays a real one on TV.”
“Then in the event we’re attacked by foam ninjas, we’re covered.”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t need to protect her. What I’ll need is for Annie…” she turned to Annie, “…to stay put for the night once the doors are closed, and to call us if that plan changes.”
“Or if there’s a fire,” Annie said.
“Call the fire department first, then us.”
“You mean, you guys aren’t going to camp outside tonight?”
“Actually, we are. But there are three exits, and you don’t like it when we cordon off whole buildings.”
This was true. During freshman orientation the Service decided to shut down the registrar so Annie could finish signing up for classes. Annie wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it when they did that.
The Frequency of Aliens Page 11
