by Rich Horton
"It's the only hope you have, Sabor. Why couldn't you stay out of it? We could have handled them."
The pain in Sabor's arm suddenly disappeared. The four hardbodies moved before his brain could adjust to the change in his situation. Choy tried to defend Purvali and a hardbody stepped behind him.
Colonel Jina smiled out of Sabor's display. “Good afternoon, Honored Sabor. We seem to have a change in the fortunes of war. Possessor Dobryami has occupied Possessor Khan's personal abode. It is now obvious Possessor Khan can no longer fulfill his contractual obligations."
"You've been a formidable opponent, Colonel. I'll be certain to recommend your services in the future."
"Your associate destroyed one of my most valuable capital assets. In spite of our agreement not to exceed certain limits."
"I'm afraid she has a tendency to become overzealous."
"I understand, Honored Sabor. Our relationships with the other sex can become difficult to control, in spite of our best efforts. But I think I'm entitled to some reasonable compensation."
"How much did you have in mind?"
Purvali straightened up. “Don't be a fool, Sabor! Pay him a ransom and you'll have to defend me against every hoodlum on the planet."
"We're not discussing a ransom,” Sabor said. “He's asking me for compensation for the soldier you killed."
"He was trying to destroy you. They would have succeeded if I hadn't done that."
"She managed to destroy my asset because we were exercising restraint,” Colonel Jina said. “We would have killed her before that if we hadn't accepted your bargain."
Data flowed across Sabor's vision. A hardbody could be replaced in approximately eleven standard years at a total cost of four hundred and sixty thousand Fernheim neils. Colonel Jina's estimated cash flow indicated each hardbody generated approximately fifty-four thousand neils per standard year. The lifetime of the hardbody was, of course, unknown, but one could estimate the cost of the maintenance required over an eleven year period and that, obviously, should be subtracted from the total cash flow....
"I can offer you one million, four thousand neils,” Sabor said.
"I believe you are underestimating the loss of business I may suffer. Every contract requires a carefully calculated number of personnel. If I need five hardbodies for one assignment, for example, and three for another, and I only have seven, I may be forced to refuse one of the assignments. According to my figures, I should ask you for at least one million, two hundred and fifty thousand."
Sabor studied the numbers the colonel presented him. “I really must point out that you're overlooking the interest you'll be earning each year on the unused portion. Your figure for lost employment seems a bit inflated, too, if you don't mind my saying so. But I'll offer you another hundred thousand anyway."
The colonel frowned. Sabor concentrated on the colonel's calculations and carefully avoided looking at Purvali.
"One million, one hundred and seventy-five,” the colonel said.
Sabor hesitated. It was a large sum. His mother would have haggled for another hour just to keep a few more thousand.
"It's getting late,” Sabor said. “If you'll agree to keep the whole sum in your account with my institution until it's paid out, I'll consider the extra hundred and seventy-thousand a small honorarium to a valued customer."
The hardbodies released Purvali and stepped back. Sabor gave his system a signal and one million, one hundred and seventy-five thousand neils jumped into Colonel Jina's account.
Colonel Jina beamed. “What other bank would I patronize?"
Sabor crossed the distance that separated him from his concubine. He put his arms around Purvali and felt her soften at his touch.
"You're a fool, Sabor."
She said the same thing again after they had struggled back to the guest quarters in the Galawar Commune and he had proved to his satisfaction (and hers, by all the signs) that he had successfully discarded his warrior mode.
"Is there any possibility,” Sabor responded, “just the slightest possibility, you will ever realize you mean just as much to me as I mean to you? That you ignite—in me—exactly the same kind of feelings I provoke in you?"
"But I was designed to feel that way, Sabor. You have choices."
"Somehow, my dove, I never seem to feel I have a choice. And I am quite confident—annoyingly confident—I can offer you some assurance I never will feel I have a choice. Never. Not ever."
She would never fully believe him, of course. He could glance at her face and see that. But she was there. She was alive. His hand was resting on her stomach. His display was running projections of the demand/profit curve for the line of crabs the Galawar Commune was bidding on, assuming the most plausible ranges of the six most relevant variables. Sabor Haveri was focusing his attention on his two major interests.
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A Coffee Cup/Alien Invasion Story by Douglas Lain
—
The UFOs in the sky over Portland look like hubcaps. Silver or chrome-plated saucers, all of them roughly the same size and all of them spinning, hang miraculously in midair, but most people either don't see them or pretend that they don't see.
It's a sunny day despite the patches of shadow the discs cast on the city. The sunshine finds its way through the gaps, bending along the sides of the ships and shining.
Down below, a young married couple, Alex and Shelly, share drinks underneath a cloth umbrella at the Blue Moon Pub. It's a hot day, and across the street, in a park squeezed into one quarter of a city block, there is a fountain bubbling away.
"Are we going to talk about it?” Alex asks.
Shelly knows exactly what the “it” is that Alex is referring to, but she just gives him a blank look and tips back her glass to take another suck on her last ice cube.
The UFOs have been up there for three weeks. At first the saucers were news everywhere. The same shot of a silver disc hovering over the White House dominated every television broadcast. But when nothing more happened, after administration officials appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and denied that there had necessarily been an alien invasion, after the President called for more study, the cameras were turned back towards earth. By the end of the second week the saucers were no longer a serious topic of conversation, and now, at the end of the third week, most people barely remember that they are up there at all.
"Are we going to talk about it?” Alex asks.
"I don't know. I'm out of booze again,” Shelly says.
* * * *
Shelly is the name of a girl I knew in high school. I didn't know her very well, but I knew of her. I decided to use her name because I recently found out that Shelly is dead. She died several years ago, in a car accident. She was twenty-seven years old.
Shelly was a cheerleader when I knew her, and a member of the homecoming court. She was pretty and blonde and in my high school yearbook she's listed as a member of the Young Life Club, whatever that was. Shelly's Senior quote was a steal from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Alex is also the name of a kid I used to know. He was a friend of mine for years when I was growing up, but I lost track of him after he was institutionalized during our freshman year of high school.
Alex and his mother lived in a small apartment on Nevada Avenue, and she used to take in cats. They had about fifteen cats and kittens in their three-room home, and Alex always smelled of cat piss because of it.
In middle school Alex often spoke to me of suicide, so I wasn't really surprised to hear that he'd tried to do it. Not even when I heard that he'd reached over from the passenger seat of his mom's station wagon and tried to grab the steering wheel out of her hands. He was aiming for a telephone pole.
Alex and Shelly aren't unusual or strange. Being dead or disturbed are very ordinary things to be.
* * * *
Last year, on July 4th, I spent the
day at home with my wife and kids; we rented the 1978 version of Superman, the one starring Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman. I watched the movie with the kids, and we all drank Coca-Cola and ate hot dogs. The only thing slightly un-American was the fact that the hot dogs were made of tofu because my wife is a vegetarian.
I tried to find the experience incongruous and ironic, but it was really just inevitable, even natural. I didn't want to celebrate the Fourth of July. I intended to let the war spoil the holiday, to ignore all the sparklers and flags. Instead, I watched Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve fly over a beautiful New York skyline, over the Statue of Liberty.
"Why are you here?” Kidder asked.
"To fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way."
"I don't believe this."
"Lois, I never lie,” Reeve said.
"Are we going to talk about the saucers, or are we going to leave it to the people on television?"
"I'm relieved,” Shelly says. She brushes her blonde hair out of her eyes, and smiles as she lies to him. “You start off with this cryptic question: ‘Are we going to talk about it?’ And I thought you were going to leave me or something."
"How could I do that? A love as true as ours?” Alex waves to the bartender, holds up two fingers in a victory sign and hopes that the bartender's nod indicates comprehension. Alex pushes back in his chair and lights up a cigarette as he waits for more gin. “You do see them, don't you?"
Shelly nods.
The bartender approaches their table with the drinks, but he's gazing at the sky. He looks down just long enough to avoid spilling their drinks. “What the hell are they doing up there? What do they want?” he asks.
"He sees them too,” Shelly says.
"Everybody sees them."
"What are they?” the bartender asks.
"Nobody knows,” Shelly says.
"Speak for yourself. I've got a damned good theory about them."
"What the hell are they?” The bartender is not listening; he's just repeating himself over and over.
"Looks like an alien invasion to me. That's my theory,” Alex says.
Shelly takes a sip from her drink, and then a gulp. “Nobody knows what they are or why they're here. It's best not to speculate,” she says.
"There are so many,” the bartender says. “Just hanging there."
Alex and Shelly don't say anything more, but keep their heads down. They don't want to look at the saucers with the bartender. They want to keep their problems private.
* * * *
Alex is plastered. He's fumbling around with his cigarettes, his neck is craned back as he stares at the flying saucers. He slumps forward to look at Shelly and takes a swig of beer. He's switched over to beer, ice-cold Pabst, and this gin and beer combination is churning a hole in his stomach. His belly lets out a low moan in nauseous protest.
Shelly is enjoying a Coca-Cola. She says she doesn't want to get drunk after all. It's not a good idea.
"Remember in The Day the Earth Stood Still when the aliens turned out all the lights?"
"I'm not even sure I see them. For me they're only there when I first get up, or if I wake up in the middle of the night,” Shelly says. “I don't really see them when I'm awake."
Alex takes Shelly's hand. “Of course you see them. Just use your eyes. Look, see?"
Shelly shrugs, pulls her hand out of his sweaty grip, and takes another sip of her soda.
He sees them all the time, so persistently that the saucers don't surprise him anymore. This is what's really bothering him, what's really making his skin crawl. The ships are a miracle, a complete disruption of the routine, and yet, at the same time, they look exactly how he'd expect them to look. They fit, somehow.
"Did I ever tell you about my religious conversion?” he asks.
"You're an atheist."
"Yeah, but I was a Christian. Between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, when I was fourteen, I was Born Again. I was saved all summer long."
Alex takes a sip of Shelly's drink and then shrugs as he puts it back down on the table and grabs his own glass. He decides to start over.
"Is it even possible that people knew how to dream before television?” he asks.
"Before television?” Shelly asks.
"Yeah. How could it be? What did these prehistoric dreams look like? How were they edited?"
When he was a child Alex dreamt that he didn't exist, that he'd never existed. He was a blank wall, an empty space between the door of his parents’ ‘82 VW station wagon and the car itself. He had nightmares that involved only darkness and a failed effort to speak.
"It wasn't until after I started watching TV in earnest, shows like Zoom and Sesame Street every day, that I could dream properly."
Alex is stirring his beer with the green straw from his gin and tonic; he's sweating and he pushes his hair off his brow, reveals just how far his hairline has receded. He takes a sip through the plastic straw and grimaces. He removes the straw.
"I had a conversion experience like a dream, while I was watching television,” Alex says. “I changed channels from MTV to HBO, and caught the beginning of the Home Box Office promotional film. This family was gathered in their living room, and the father rose from the couch and turned on the TV. He turned on HBO and for an instant there they were again, the family on television was on television, and the father on their television turned on the TV and there they were again, and so on to infinity. Just for an instant. And then the camera pulled back, up and back, through the chimney, over the rooftop, and into space."
Alex pauses, stares blankly, remembering what he'd seen. He refocuses on Shelly, tries to read her face to see if she's getting it.
"It was just a feeling. I think the word for what I experienced is satori,” Alex says. “In literature the word would be epiphany."
In the HBO promo, the camera drew nearer to the UFOs and it became clear that what was really flying through space were three metallic letters: H, B, and O. Red, blue, and green lasers shot through the logo. The introductory segment came to a conclusion as the HBO craft filled the screen completely.
"I actually got down on my knees and prayed when the promo ended. I prayed to a John Cusack film. I surrendered to One Crazy Summer."
"You saw God in the logo for HBO?” Shelly asks.
"I saw God in everything, but the feeling went away. I got over it."
Shelly finishes her drink, tipping her glass back and then chewing on the ice in her mouth. She puts the glass down heavily, pushes her hair back behind an ear, and stares at her husband.
"For the past few weeks I've had that same feeling, only I know it isn't God this time."
"I need another drink,” Shelly says. She looks down at the table and puts her hands around her empty glass.
"There's something else. Something I can do,” Alex says.
"What something?"
"I'll show you.” He stands up, brings his hands up over his head, and waves them around.
Alex starts humming, a sort of deep toneless hum, and he keeps his arms flailing. And slowly he rises up, he floats, until his tennis-shoe-clad feet are even with the tabletop.
"Get down.” Shelly glances furtively into the restaurant window. “Stop it, I don't want to see this."
Alex has his eyes closed, his arms are spinning in circles, and the humming is getting louder.
"Alex!"
At the sound of his name he comes back down. He lands awkwardly, and then slowly picks himself up, and inspects himself. He looks for cuts and bruises.
"Nice one,” Shelly says.
"Thanks."
"Really good,” Shelly says.
"You're welcome."
* * * *
In 1995 I attended a writers’ workshop in Seattle. One of the instructors, a very fine writer whose work has won all sorts of awards, taught us that there are many different ways to write stories. There aren't any solid rules. Sometimes you can show too much and not tell enough, for in
stance. And sometimes you don't really need a plot, but you can just make a story out of two people sharing a cup of coffee or a pint of beer.
These plotless stories, he called them “New Yorker Cup of Coffee Stories,” are subtle. All that happens is that a situation is set up, explained, and then two people sit down, share a cup of coffee, and through the course of their interaction the situation is changed. There is only a little movement, maybe just a millimeter. A millimeter is apparently enough.
* * * *
In August of 2001 my sister-in-law visited Disneyland. She sent my kids Mickey Mouse ears as souvenirs and they arrived about a week before 9/11. So after the attack, while I was surrounded by flags and fear, while I was worrying about anthrax and the possibility of nuclear retaliation, my kids were constantly in their ears.
They kept asking me to teach them to talk like Mickey, kept asking me to pretend to be Donald Duck.
On September 12th we went to the park across the street from a Starbucks and the Blue Moon Pub, a little park that only took up a quarter of a city block. We stood and stared at the fountain. It burbled away. Water streamed out the mouth of a cement frog.
I didn't want to talk like Mickey Mouse so I pointed out the cement amphibian.
"The Native Americans thought that frogs were good medicine,” I told the kids. “Cleansing medicine."
It was a bluff. I didn't know anything about Indian religions. I'd read a few books, but I didn't really know. I should have stuck with what was familiar. I should have given in to Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse ears.
"Frogs?” my son asked. “How can an animal be medicine?"
"I thought medicine comes from a store,” my daughter said.
I didn't know how to explain it to them. How could an animal be medicine? Where do you find medicine if not in a store? I didn't really understand it myself.
* * * *
Shelly puts down her drink and runs her fingers through her hair. She looks down at the table and grunts. She and Alex have been together since high school, for seven years. They moved in together right after graduation. They've only been married for the past six months, but before that there were six years; how could it turn out that they haven't known each other at all?
