Analog SFF, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Maybe he just wasn't answering the phone. Delmer wasn't doing any good at the motel, and he was going to have to check out soon anyway, so he decided to risk driving over to the office in person.

  When he got there, after battling Seattle's rush-hour traffic into the downtown area, he found that he was too late. The UFO people had already been there. The office had been ransacked; file cabinets lay on their sides and papers were strewn everywhere. Delmer took one look, then spun around and rushed back to the street. The sidewalks were full of people; it was impossible to tell if anyone was watching him or not.

  As nonchalantly as he could, he walked with the crowd for the block and a half to his car, then he ducked inside and started it up and pulled out into traffic, cutting off a taxi whose driver honked the horn and cursed at him as he drove to the next light and turned right. The taxi went on, so Delmer went a couple of blocks before turning right again, then he drove half a block and pulled into a parking lot where he slid into a slot between a van and a pickup camper.

  He switched off the car and watched in the mirror for signs of pursuit, but it looked like he'd gotten away clean. He wondered how much longer he could elude them, though. They'd taken Sid, and Sid did this sort of thing for a living. Delmer slumped in his seat. Living. God. He couldn't go home, and he couldn't go to work, either. In a couple of weeks the UFO people could just start searching the park benches at night and eventually find him.

  He had to do something to turn the tables. Take the initiative and put them on the run. But what could he do? Sid had kept the camera, and now the UFO people undoubtedly had it, so he didn't even have any proof that they existed. All he had was the address of the house where the woman had gone last night.

  But they didn't know that. There could have been two cameras, for all they knew. And half a dozen compatriots.

  Smiling for the first time in hours, Delmer opened the glove box and took out a pen and his car logbook, tore out a blank sheet, and began composing his message.

  They met by the fountain at the Center, the old World's Fair site in the middle of town. The Space Needle towered overhead like a flying saucer speared on the Eiffel Tower; a fitting omen, Delmer thought, for the business at hand. He waited in plain sight, trying to project an aura of confidence. Either they believed his threats of setting up blind mail drops to the press or they didn't; skulking about and trying to spot their agents before they spotted him would only cast doubt on his story.

  So he watched a couple of high-school kids tossing a Frisbee back and forth across the open bowl of the fountain until he heard footsteps approaching him from the side. He looked over casually, then felt his legs buckle when he recognized his contact.

  "Leo!” The friend he'd watched die from poison in a hotel bar reached out to steady him, and Delmer wrapped his arms around him in a tight hug. “Leo, how did you . . .” Then he noticed the blond woman dressed in imitation grunge standing behind Leo, trying not to smirk, and realization came all at once. “You're one of them, aren't you?"

  "Got it in one,” Leo said, gently disentangling himself.

  "Wow," Delmer whispered as the implications hit him. If Leo was in on the conspiracy, then it had to be even more far-reaching than he'd thought. “You were trying to scare me off,” he said.

  "Two for two,” said Leo. He sat down on the stone rim ringing the fountain. “It worked for your detective buddy. He agreed to keep quiet after we ransacked his office. You're a stubborn S.O.B., though. I've got to admit I misjudged you."

  Delmer sat down beside him. No matter what, he had to keep playing the role. So, as gruffly as he could manage with a throat that was still all choked up with relief over finding his friend alive, he said, “Don't do it again."

  Leo laughed. “We won't."

  "Good.” Delmer looked over to the woman who'd come with Leo, but she was no longer standing where she'd been. As casually as he could manage, Delmer scanned the crowd, but she had disappeared. Gone home, or gone into hiding to better protect Leo? Delmer decided not to make any sudden moves, just in case.

  "No, we've decided you're a big enough pain in the ass, we'd be better off having you on our side."

  Delmer had to put his hands down on the stone to hold himself upright. All his preconceived notions had been smashed to splinters in an instant. The Black Space Program wanted him? Because he was a pain in the ass? He looked into Leo's eyes to see if he could spot any hint of deception there, but he saw only friendly amusement in his expression. “Really?” he asked. “And Sid wasn't?"

  "Sid's a detective. They learn real quick not to mess with things that're bigger than they are. Not unless they've got enough leverage to deal with it, which he didn't as soon as we found his camera."

  "Well, I've still got mine,” Delmer said. “Or my buddies do. But before I agree to join anything, maybe you ought to tell me just who I'd be joining."

  Leo nodded. “Fair enough. You had it pretty close, you know. NASA and the Air Force are in on it, and most of the major defense contractors. And the Catholic church; you got that right too. The only one you missed was the movie industry. We're in it clear up to our panaflexes."

  "But—but you haven't made any movies about it! How could you keep it quiet!"

  Leo laughed. “We haven't, really. All those nifty special effects you've been seeing for the last couple decades—that's not computer-generated. Most of it's actual footage. We've been making a fortune off this, but we just haven't put it all together into one big film yet."

  "Wow,” Delmer said. “You mean Star Wars is real? There really is a battle going on out there?"

  "Probably somewhere,” Leo said. “It's a big universe. But no, Lucas just dresses up a few dozen ships to look like fighters and makes adventure movies."

  Delmer shook his head in amazement. “Special effects. Of course. Jeez, how could I have missed that?"

  "Hey, don't be too rough on yourself. You weren't supposed to figure out any of it."

  That made him feel a little better, until he realized the one organization Leo hadn't mentioned. “What about SETI?"

  Leo shook his head. “They're still in the dark."

  "Why? I'd have thought the alien contact people would be your top guys."

  "They would,” Leo said with a smile, “except we've already made contact years ago."

  Delmer nodded knowingly. “Of course. 1947, Roswell, New Mexico."

  Leo nodded. “Among others. Our base on the far side of the Moon is full of ‘em. Well, what do you say? Will you join us?"

  Delmer had to fight to keep from babbling. Of course he'd join them. He'd do it just for the chance to ride into space aboard a genuine UFO—though he supposed they were no longer unidentified, at least from his point of view.

  But was Leo's offer sincere? Delmer wanted to think it was, but after the last day's experience he realized he could never trust anyone completely again. Nor could he afford to let them think he did. So he nodded slowly and said, “I'll join you on one condition. If I don't like what I see, you let me go in exchange for my silence. I'll keep my photos of your people and your ship, and I'll keep my blind drop setup so you can't double-cross me, and we'll both just go on about our business as if nothing had ever happened."

  Leo didn't look happy. “We'd rather not have that threat hanging over our heads,” he said. “I mean, what if something happened to you, something we didn't have any control over? Then your buddies e-mail the photos and we've got no end of covering up to do."

  "You'll just have to make sure nothing happens to me,” Delmer said.

  Still frowning, Leo said, “Look, just between friends here, let me warn you: your photos aren't that big a deal. They could cause problems, but they won't shut us down. So if you become more trouble than your photos would be, then I'm not going to be able to help cover your ass, you understand?"

  Delmer shuddered. What was he getting himself into? He didn't know, not for sure, but it looked like he was going to find out, for the only an
swer he could make was the one Leo wanted to hear. “All right,” he said. “We've got a deal."

  * * * *

  Delmer used his cell phone to call his home number and left a message on his answering machine, which, he'd explained to Leo, his co-conspirators would also call and use the remote codes to listen for his instructions. Leo was listening over his shoulder, so he said simply, “Hold ‘em for a week. If you don't hear from me by then, send ‘em.” He was about to hang up when he realized that Leo and his pals would think they could just synthesize his voice and leave other messages for his imaginary conspirators, so he quickly said the first nonsense word he could think of, as if it was a code: “Glastonbury."

  He hung up the phone and turned to Leo. “Okay,” he said. “You've got a week. Let's see your wonderful setup."

  Delmer's first ride in a UFO was everything he had hoped for. They boarded a flying saucer in a field outside of Redmond, and the pilot—an almond-eyed alien with skinny arms and an oversized head—took them for a joyride down the backbone of the Cascade Mountains before lifting off into space. The alien even let Delmer fly the ship for a while, using the amazingly simple controls to zip around the Earth as if the planet were no bigger than an asteroid.

  "Aren't we setting off practically every radar alarm in the world?” Delmer asked.

  Leo grinned. “That's right. Of course our side knows what's causing it, and the people who don't know need a good scare every now and then. Why don't you make another low pass over the Middle East just for the heck of it?"

  They soon tired of buzzing humanity and headed for the base on the back side of the Moon. Once they were free of the atmosphere it took just under an hour to travel the quarter-million miles to get there. As Delmer watched the Moon grow steadily larger, he boggled at the degree of technology involved. They weren't even wearing seat belts.

  The moonbase was an architect's dream. Low gravity and improbably strong building materials allowed structures to span incredible distances without support. Buildings shaped like palm trees—each frond a separate apartment—filled one crater like an inverted south-seas island, while the crater next to it was a webwork of narrow ribbons weaving among angular, crystalline-looking spikes. Real trees grew among the buildings and even on some of them, and Delmer wondered what they did for air until he noticed a shimmering hemisphere over the entire city, like a soap bubble resting on the surface. They'd domed in an area at least twenty miles across.

  Then as they crossed through it and came in for a landing Delmer realized it was wilder than that: the “dome” was just a boundary between air and space. They used nothing so crude as an actual wall to hold in the atmosphere; rather some kind of force field that allowed spaceships to come and go without hindrance. He presumed the field also kept out cosmic rays and other harmful radiation.

  They flew straight to Leo's house, which was a crystal palace the size of the Taj Mahal. Multisided columns hundreds of feet high stuck out at odd angles from a central core like flowers in a vase. They landed on a plush lawn beside one of the towers, next to half a dozen other UFOs, no two of which were alike. One of them was undoubtedly Leo's own private ship: It was a chrome-silver ellipse, almost liquid-looking, like a raindrop caught in motion. It was smaller than the others, only twenty feet long or so, and maybe fifteen wide. The control bubble at the top was swept back, giving the whole thing an impression of speed even standing still. Like a fighter jet parked next to a passenger plane, it screamed out “fast."

  "Nice car,” Delmer said as they walked past it toward the palace's entrance. He was trying to keep from falling over in the strange, light gravity, and trying not to freak out at the very idea of being in a city on the back side of the moon.

  "Isn't she slick?” Leo said proudly. “Maybe later we can take her out to Saturn and do some ring racing or something."

  "Sure,” Delmer said, thinking, Must be rough living here.

  His impression didn't change when he saw the inside of Leo's mansion. It had enough rooms to house a small nation, and the potential to transform into practically any shape Leo wanted. Leo just had to show him the rushes from his latest movie, and they watched it from the fourteenth row of a thirty-row theater in which three-quarters of the seats were occupied by soft, realistic dummies put there so the acoustics would match that of a nearly full theater. Leo took him on a tour of the grounds as well, pointing out all the exotic plants he'd brought from Earth and a few that had come from farther away.

  When Delmer grew tired of admiring Leo's riches, Leo sent him to bed in his very own penthouse apartment atop a leaning spire about fifty stories high. Delmer spent a restless few hours waiting for the thing to either fall over or launch him to Alpha Centauri, but neither happened so he turned down the windows to simulate night—sunset still being a few days away according to Leo—and slept fitfully until Leo woke him up and took him on a tour of the city.

  The population seemed to be about half alien. It took Delmer a couple of days to stop flinching whenever he turned a corner and came face-to-face with one of the almond-eyed Vreenish, and even after he'd met a few and discovered that they weren't interested in doing painful rectal exams on him, he still felt like a cat in a room full of dogs. What were they doing here? he wondered.

  And as his stay stretched into the third and fourth days, each one full of wonderful new discoveries, Delmer began to wonder why none of this technology was making it to Earth. He asked Leo about it on the afternoon of his fourth day on the Moon.

  The Sun was just setting at the end of the city's two-week day. Leo and Delmer were watching it from the top of a corkscrew-shaped building nearly a mile high. They were still in full sunlight, but the ground below them was already a dark plain glittering with points of light that were hills and crater rims catching the last rays of the sun.

  Leo considered Delmer's question for a minute or so before answering. “Well, we do share some of it. Mostly movie special effects, and some computer technology. Cell phones. We plan to introduce more of it eventually, but not just yet. The Vreenish haven't finished studying us yet, and they don't want to mess things up before they understand how it works. We can't just dump new technology and a new way of life on people all at once; they aren't ready for it. Give them all this without preparation and pretty soon Luna will look just like Cleveland rather than the other way around."

  "Hmm,” Delmer said. He'd heard that argument before, as an excuse to keep from helping underdeveloped nations industrialize. He said, “You seem to have adapted pretty well. And the what, half million or so other people here? They've handled the culture shock without too much trouble, haven't they?"

  Leo had been leaning out against one of the slanted windows; he turned his head toward Delmer and said, “Well, yeah, but we're a special case. We were ready to accept this. Most of us were already living in a fantasy world of our own creation when we discovered the Vreenish."

  "There's millions of people out there who already believe in UFOs with practically no evidence at all,” Delmer pointed out. He was standing back from the window; he couldn't bring himself to lean out over a mile-high drop with only a pane of glass—even improbably strong glass—between him and the ground.

  "It'll take a lot more than naive credulity to bring humanity up to speed,” Leo said sarcastically.

  Naive, is it? Delmer thought. Was it naive to uncover the whole conspiracy simply by piecing together what he read in the papers? Was it naive to penetrate their cover deeply enough to make them take action against him, even recruit him? Hah. Leo didn't fool him. He and his cronies here on the Moon simply wanted to keep their incredible toys to themselves for as long as possible.

  Well, if Delmer had anything to say about it, that wouldn't be much longer.

  He shook Leo's chaperonage easy enough by simply telling him he wanted to explore on his own for a while. Leo was getting tired of showing him around anyway, so it hardly took any convincing. As soon as he got free, Delmer spent a day doing just what
he'd said he would do: exploring. He found a shopping mall where he bought a portable book reader and electronic copies of half a dozen primers for understanding the Vreenish technology, plus as many other gadgets as he could carry. Universal language translators, indestructible clothing, personal force fields—he felt like Buck Rogers by the time he left the mall.

  * * * *

  When he got back to his apartment he used his new wrist videophone to call Leo. It was easier than trying to track him down in the sprawling mansion. When Leo's holographic head appeared above his hand, he said, “I think it's time I went back and defused my answering machine message, don't you?"

  Leo laughed. “Funny thing about that. You know, nobody has called your number all week?"

  Delmer could feel himself turning white. He'd forgotten that one crucial detail in his bluff.

  "Don't worry,” Leo said. “You're already here, and it would be more trouble to take you back than it would be to let you stay. Just keep your nose clean, or we'll send you back so fast you'll think you were teleported."

  "Thanks,” Delmer said sarcastically.

  "Hey, you're a friend,” Leo replied. “I wouldn't do this for just anybody."

  No, of course not, thought Delmer. He only did it for people who were a big enough threat to warrant his attention. “You're a true pal,” he said, then he switched off the phone, packed his treasures in a bag, and left the penthouse apartment.

  The parking lawn was still full of flying saucers. Delmer headed straight for the liquid chrome one. Leo hadn't taken him out in it yet, but from watching as they flew around in the others, he was pretty sure he didn't need a key. He felt a twinge of guilt at stealing what probably amounted to his best friend's penile extension, but if he knew Leo, he'd just use the opportunity to buy an even bigger one with his insurance settlement.

  Acting nonchalant, as if he were just a parking valet, Delmer walked straight up to the saucer, climbed the ramp that slid out when he approached, and sat in the single pilot's chair. The ramp slid up behind him and the door sealed tight. Delmer examined the control board, a tight horseshoe-shaped console wrapping around the chair. The controls weren't arranged like the ones in the UFO he'd flown on the way to the Moon, but they were labeled with little international-style pictures of the ship tilting this way and that, and zooming along with speed lines stretched out behind it. Delmer found the one that looked like the lift button, but nothing happened when he pressed it.