by Gene Brewer
I turned to my wife. “Want to go to Washington?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Listen: it looks like you’ll be talking to the President. About things that will require your full attention. You don’t need any distractions. And you can tell me everything when you get back.”
“I don’t know when that will be.”
“Well, if you’re speaking to the UN in a week, you’ll probably need to talk to Walter again long before that.”
I nodded. “All right, if you’re sure. But Jones said it would be all right if you — ”
“Tell me about it when you get back.”
“You want to go with me to the airport?”
“No, I’ll stay here with Flower. Do you think I could call the Siegels?”
Before I could answer, the doorbell rang again. It was Wang. I knew because he showed me his badge. “I would put a hold on any calls,” he advised, as if he had heard our conversation.
Karen kissed me good-bye and Flower whined, not knowing what was up. Or maybe she did. I gave her a pat, sighed, and shuffled out the door to Wang’s waiting Humvee. Before I got in, I looked around wistfully. From our driveway one can just see the tops of the mountains, alive with color. I grinned bitterly: if the human race is wiped out by Walter and his crew, I wouldn’t need the colonoscopy scheduled for next month. A perfectly normal reaction, no doubt. I have read that the first thing some people do when they are told they have cancer is to cancel their dental appointments.
We didn’t talk on the way to the airport. In fact, I fell asleep, something I often do after lunch. I had been meaning to see someone about possible food sensitivities, but never got around to it. Now it probably wouldn’t matter. As I was drifting off, though, it occurred to me to wonder what I would do if my speech to the UN came right after lunch. If one were offered, I could say, “No, thanks, I’m not hungry.” To take my mind off the present situation, I quietly chanted that response several more times.
Before I knew it we were at the airport. Wang drove me to the “Departures” entrance. I had no idea where we would go from there. But there was no need to worry: a youngish (anyone under fifty is “youngish” to me) man opened the door for me when we pulled up to the curb. Behind him, and off to the side, stood a couple of other guys in dark blue suits and red ties. Secret Service, I supposed. Ordinarily I would be overwhelmed by such treatment. But after what had already happened only a couple of hours earlier, it somehow didn’t seem either thrilling or weird. It was merely another thing I would have to get used to.
I thanked Wang for the ride. Amazingly, he shook my hand. “We’re all depending on you, sir,” he said. I didn’t know whether he meant everyone at the CIA or the entire world’s population.
The last words of advice Karen had given me were, “Relax and enjoy it.” I couldn’t help but smile. Nothing fazes my wife. Nothing ever has. I wished she were flying off to see the President, giving the speech to the world. She would no doubt relax and enjoy it.
It was — you guessed it — Mr. Jones who escorted me into the airport. Surprisingly (to me, at least), he was a genial sort, with a wide smile, shiny teeth, cleft chin, and a firm handshake. He was wearing a tweed sport coat — informally dressy, I would call it. Still under forty, I guessed, though not by much. He reminded me of Arthur Beamish, a former colleague (that’s how I remember faces — by comparing them to ones I was already familiar with).
As we proceeded past the ticket counters (I was surprised — no one else was in sight, even the ticket agents) he said, “You have a general idea of why the President wants to see you, Dr. Brewer. Or is it the other way around? In either case, let me ask whether you have any questions at the outset.”
I had millions. But I doubted that Jones, or anyone else, would know the answers to most of them. “Well, first, how did Wang get to the house so fast? Where was he?”
He scratched his chin. Perhaps he was thinking about how much he could, or should, tell me. Maybe he was only a low-level spy who hadn’t yet mastered the art of guile. On the other hand, it’s conceivable that his chin itched. Anyway, his answer seemed forthright enough. “Mr. Wang is our liaison with you. I can tell you now that he’s been keeping an eye on you since fled’s visit. We wanted to be sure that if she or prot came back, or if you received a visit from anyone else, we would know about it immediately. We don’t want to screw this one up — it’s far too important.” He turned to focus his gaze on me, perhaps to make sure I understood the urgency. He needn’t have worried. I was as keyed up as if I had had a thousand cups of coffee. “So we stationed Wang at a location very near you, where he has had one job and one job only: to make sure that, this time, we were in on anything that might happen. You were his only — uh — client during that period.”
We proceeded to the gates. For the first time, I took a good look around me. There were cops everywhere, in addition to several more obvious G-men wearing identical blue suits and dark glasses. I suddenly realized that, as Karen surmised, I had become a very important person. It was not an altogether unpleasant feeling.
We breezed through Security, the personnel stepping out of the way as if we were royalty. I don’t know where they put the regular passengers, but there were none in evidence. “And where is Mr. — ?”
“Mr. Dartmouth is in a rest home near you.”
“So Wang can — ?”
“That’s right. He visits him every day.”
“And when I called him…”
“He’s been waiting for that call for a long time, Dr. Brewer. For that matter, so has Mr. Dartmouth. He was delighted when it came. Wang told us it cheered him up enormously.”
“And if I hadn’t called, would he have known about my visitor?”
“Yes. You might as well know now that we have had you under close surveillance for the past eight years.”
“You mean… ?”
“Well, no. Not in your house. But in your immediate surroundings, yes. We know when you leave and return, where you’ve been.”
“So you have a bug in my car, as well as around the house.”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“I see.” I paused to let that sink in. “So you know what Walter sounds like.”
“And what he looks like, too.”
“You mean my car has a camera in it?”
“No, but there are a couple in the woods and one on your roof behind the satellite dish. And others in the various places you visit regularly.”
“Like the shopping center.”
“Among other places, yes.”
I felt somewhat uncomfortable with this information, but that didn’t seem to matter much now. “So I’ll be dealing with Dartmouth and Wang again? Or at least Wang?”
“No, his job is done. You’ll be dealing with us from now on. You’ll probably never see him again.”
“Oh happy day.”
He frowned at me again, this time a little more sharply. “Dr. Brewer, you do realize the significance of what is going on, don’t you, sir?”
“Sorry. Of course I do.”
He nodded. We turned down a corridor. I presumed we would be heading for a ramp, but we veered into a stairwell and down and out onto the airport grounds. Straight ahead of us was Air Force One. Beautiful and, with “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” painted on the side of the fuselage, quite unmistakable. There were a few other planes parked here and there, but none taking off or landing, or even taxiing. A half-dozen of us marched straight toward it. The engines were whining softly, like giant animals purring in anticipation. An ambulance stood nearby — I wondered whether one of the pilots had become ill. As we climbed the steps and went aboard through the executive entrance (I was told), I couldn’t help recalling the times I had watched newsreels of Presidents and First Ladies trot up those same steps into the First Aircraft. Until th
at moment I had been able to deal, more or less, with everything that had happened, even my conversation with Walter. But this seemed so unreal that I honestly thought I would wake up at any moment and find that I had dreamed the whole thing. I was in pretty good shape for my age, but I nevertheless found myself panting before we reached the top step, more with anxiety than exertion, I suspect. That was when I realized that the ambulance was standing by for me. I suddenly felt very strange. My life had changed inexorably. It appeared that I was being carried along on a journey to the unknown whether I wanted to go or not. Oddly, though, it seemed like a trip I had taken before, and I almost looked forward to whatever was to come. Once you get into a situation like this, no matter how bizarre, it’s everything else — your ordinary mundane activities — that suddenly become unreal.
I had followed Mr. Jones up the stairs and into the plane, where the co-captain greeted me with a cheery salute (though not a handshake, perhaps so that I wouldn’t catch any viruses he might harbor). “Welcome aboard, sir.” I nodded importantly. We turned right upon entering, just as you would with any ordinary commercial flight. There the similarity ended. Of course, I expected to see rows of seats stretched out before me, as I always have, but we passed through a meeting room of some kind (where I was introduced to a medical doctor named Greaney) and into what was obviously a dining room. Jones indicated where I might sit, and I slipped into a comfortable-looking chair. My host sat down next to me while our armed (I presumed) escorts positioned themselves around the “room,” some still standing, at least until takeoff. By then the cabin door had closed and we were already taxiing almost imperceptibly toward a runway. I instinctively fastened my seat belt.
“Comfortable?” Jones asked me. “Have you had lunch? Can we get you anything to drink?”
“Maybe a Coke?”
He lifted a finger and an attendant appeared immediately. “Cokes,” Jones told him, and he hurried off, returning in only a moment with two tall glasses fizzing and tinkling with the cola and transparent cubes of ice, served on a handsome tray with the Presidential seal embossed on the surface. I had once spilled a soft drink in-flight, so I took the proffered straw.
“I could get used to this,” I said with a feeble smile.
“You’d be surprised how many people say that. Including Presidents and members of the Cabinet, and even the press. On their first trip, at least.”
“I suppose so.”
We were already rolling down the runway, and those who were standing quickly found seats, though the acceleration and liftoff were so smooth that I hardly felt any change in speed or takeoff angle. I felt a little trepidation, the familiar tingling in my stomach. It wasn’t that I was worried about the flight (I, myself, had learned to fly a few years earlier, though I hadn’t flown in a while), which Jones told me would take only an hour or so. It was that a whole spectrum of events were rushing forward, indeed accelerating, with me imbedded in them like an insect in amber, and I realized there was no turning back. We were hurtling toward the unknown, just as we were climbing into empty space. I pretended coolness by taking another sip of the fizzy beverage. As we lifted off, Jones told me a bit about the aircraft itself, with its armored windows and defense systems, the various offices on the other side of the plane, the Presidential suite on the upper level. When he had finished this cursory description, he suggested we compare notes.
“I don’t have any notes.”
After staring at me for a moment he said, “Okay, I’ll begin. If I get something wrong, you’ll tell me, okay?”
“Fine.” I gazed toward the rear of the plane, wondered who or what might be in the rear compartments.
“We know you were visited by a man named Walter, who is, in reality, a corpse.” He pulled a picture from his inside jacket pocket. It had been taken in the shopping center parking lot only a few hours before. It seemed like days. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
And there he was, my worst nightmare. Even in a photo, and a telephoto at that, I could see the eyes, vacant and staring. “Where is he now? The body, I mean.”
“Our visitor left him where he found him.”
“I think he prefers the royal ‘we.’”
“So we heard. I didn’t know whether you were comfortable with that.”
“I’m not comfortable with any of this.”
“Yes, of course. Neither was I. But none of us have much choice in matters like this, sir, wouldn’t you say?”
I remember sighing deeply at that point. It wouldn’t be my last involuntary bodily function. “Yes, I guess that’s true.”
“Now, the Bullocks want you to make a speech to the United Nations Security Council, right?”
“That’s what he — I mean they — said.”
“But you don’t know what they want you to speak about.”
“No, not exactly. Something about our eagerness to kill each other, I think.”
“And that’s supposed to happen in a week or so, right?”
“Yes. He said a week. But is that possible? Can arrangements be made with the UN to get something on their calendar that fast? Maybe we should schedule it for sometime next year? By then — ”
“Dr. Brewer, let’s get something straight. We’ve learned a few things since your last visitor. The government was a bit slow to react to fled, and frankly we weren’t sure at first whether she was really from the planet K-PAX. But we have a different President and a different visitor now. So let’s cut to the chase. We believe that anyone who can make a dead body walk and talk, and make a large tree disappear without a trace, is probably who they say they are. And we take what they say very, very seriously. The future of the human race and perhaps everything else on the planet depends on that. We have confidence that you will do whatever is necessary to accommodate the Bullocks’ wishes, but we need to be sure we’re all on the same page. Understood and agreed to so far?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Okay,” I replied dismally, “what do we do next?”
“The President is waiting for you at the White House, along with the Vice-president, the Cabinet, Congressional leaders of both parties, and a number of diplomats who have made themselves available, mainly to help determine how the Bullocks’ demands can best be carried out, if that is, in fact, possible. At a later time some of them will meet with a number of foreign heads of state to inform them and give them a chance to express their views on the situation. There isn’t time for that right now.”
“What about the military?”
He smiled a bit wearily. “This isn’t a movie, sir. It’s for real. The military isn’t going to attack Walter, or anyone else. We all feel this wouldn’t do us the slightest good, and could be extremely counterproductive. Nevertheless, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be there, but only so that the military will be informed, and will not do anything rash, no matter what happens.”
I sucked on my straw, vaguely remembering the days when I was a smoker, and even before that, when I sucked my thumb until I was almost three. How odd it is that so many of us can never give up the warmth and comfort of a mother’s breast. Or is it? “How long has the government been making plans for the Bullocks’ arrival?”
“Ever since fled’s departure.”
How did you know they would be here so soon? They were supposed — ”
“I’ll tell you a secret. Some people think our government only reacts to problems that come before it. The fact is, there are contingency plans for many things that might never happen: an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, a new plague starting in some remote part of the world, nuclear weapons getting into the wrong hands, and so forth. An invasion of any kind, even a friendly one, by alien beings is at the top of the list. Especially an invasion by aliens, in view of the fact that we know they are out there, thanks to your two visitors. Now thr
ee visitors. Maybe even more. A consensus has been reached, both within the government and with other governments, that we need to co-operate with the Bullocks and carry out whatever demands they might make, unless they are impossible for us to comply with. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous. Are you surprised to learn that the government is on top of these things?”
“Well… Yes, I suppose I am. I had the feeling that our government is almost clueless sometimes.”
“As I said, what really goes on is not advertised, nor can it be. Some of it is classified, if you will. You’d be surprised what the experts tell us would happen if the public knew about the contingency plans we have in place. Many people would misunderstand our intentions and freak out. A few trusted members of the press know a little of this, but very few.”
“So why are you letting me in on the secret?”
“Because of what’s happened, you’ve been put in the ‘need to know’ category.”
“I don’t know whether to be proud of this honor, or terrified by it.”
“It is what it is.”
“So why call me in? You’ve already decided on what has to be done. There’s nothing to do now but wait until I hear from Walter again, is there?”
“Well, sir, there’s one factor missing from the equation. That’s where you come in.”
“What factor?”
“You, Dr. Brewer. We need to make sure that you are as well-prepared as possible for your next encounter with Walter, or whoever they happen to be at the time. And for your address to the United Nations.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“We need to make certain that you are in compliance with the general tenets of the overall plan. That you’re not going to be a rogue elephant unwilling to co-operate with us, or with Walter. That you have no health or psychological issues that would preclude your speaking at a time certain to the UN. To the world.”
“Oh. Yes, I see what you mean. But you have to admit it’s not easy to have the survival of the whole world on your shoulders.”
