Agent to the Stars

by John Scalzi

  “I don’t really miss all the smog, mind you,” Carl said, staring off . “But they made for some beautiful sunsets. The late seventies were a horrible period in the history of the universe, Tom—you had stagflation, the American hostages in Iran, and some terrible, terrible apparel. And smog. But the sunsets weren’t so bad. It doesn’t make up for anything, but it goes to show not everything can be bad all at once.”

  “I didn’t know you had been married more than once,” I said. “I had thought Elise was your first wife.” Carl’s wife Elise was the scariest person you’d ever want to meet—a terrifyingly intelligent trial lawyer who also had a doctorate in psychology. She was thinking of running for Los Angeles District Attorney. From there it would be a short hop to mayor. Between the two of them, Carl and Elise would be running southern California within the decade.

  Carl glanced over. “Elise is my second wife. Susan died in ’81. Car accident; some drunk idiot came up the wrong way on an on-ramp and plowed right into her car. They both died instantly. Pregnant at the time, you know.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bring up any painful memories.”

  Carl waved it off. “No reason you should know. I never talk about it and no one ever talks about it around me. One of the advantages of being the sort of boss that scares the hell out of the subordinates. Susan was a wonderful woman—but so is Elise. I’ve been very lucky.”

  “Yes, sir.” We ate our corn dogs in silence.

  “Come on,” Carl said, after he had finished his dog. “I haven’t walked on the beach for weeks. We can chat while we walk.” We walked off the pier, stopped off at Carl’s car to drop off our shoes and socks, and then walked into the sand towards the surf.

  “So,” he said, when we walked to the water. “How is Joshua doing?”

  I swallowed and saw my career flash before my eyes. “He’s missing at the moment, Carl,” I said.

  “Missing? Explain.”

  “He and Ralph—my neighbor’s dog—went out for a walk in the woods yesterday, while I was off seeing Elliot Young. When I got back into the office, Miranda had a message from him, saying that something had happened, and that he’d be late. That’s the last I’ve heard of him. I went looking for him last night, but I didn’t find him. I stayed up until six this morning, and he hadn’t returned.”

  “Where would he go?” Carl said. “He’s not exactly inconspicuous.”

  “The Angeles National Forest starts more or less in my backyard,” I said. “They went into the woods.”

  If I were Carl, this would have been the point where I would have fired me. Instead, Carl changed the subject. “I hear you flattened Ben Fleck’s nose yesterday.”

  “I did,” I admitted. “He pinched Elliot Young off of me. He’s also the ‘Lupo Associates insider’ in that damned story in The Biz. Punching him seemed the only alternative to breaking his neck. Although I’m feeling guilty about it now. I think I may have broken his nose.”

  “It’s not broken,” Carl said. “We had some X-rays done at Cedars Sinai. It’s merely ‘severely bruised.’”

  “Well, that’s good,” I said. “I mean, relatively speaking.”

  “It is,” Carl agreed. “Be that as it may, Tom, I would prefer in the future that you find some less dramatic way to resolve your issues with Ben. Ben may have been asking for it, but that sort of thing isn’t very good for company morale. Also, all things considered, it’s drawing unwanted attention to you at the moment.”

  Carl was referring to the blurb in the Times’ movie industry column—one of the office spectators had leaked to the paper, and the paper did the legwork and found out that Ben had snaked one of my clients. It also mentioned the article in The Biz as a contributing factor, giving the article credence in the process. For even more fun, the Times had called my office this morning as well, looking for a comment on The Biz and its editorial practices. It felt like the media had pried up a floorboard looking for a bug, and that bug was me. I just wanted to fade back into the darkness.

  I laughed. Carl look at me oddly. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about it. This week I was ditched by two of my clients, was labeled insane by a magazine, assaulted a colleague, and let an alien walk off into the woods, where he’s probably been eaten by a coyote. I’m trying to imagine how this week can get any worse. I don’t think it can.”

  “We could have an earthquake,” Carl said.

  “An earthquake would be wonderful,” I said. “It would give everyone else something to think about. A nice big one, seven or eight on the Richter scale. Major structural damage. That’d work.”

  Carl stood there a moment, seemingly preoccupied. I followed his line of sight down to his toes. He was busily squelching sand through them. After a few seconds of this, he stepped out of his footprints and let the tide wash into them, partially erasing them. Then he put his feet back into them.

  “Tom,” Carl said. “Don’t worry too much about Joshua at the moment. He’ll be fine. The Yherajk are pretty much indestructible by our standards, and I doubt that the coyotes or whatever are going to get a bite out of him. Joshua can make a skunk seem like a bed of roses. He and … Ralph?”—He looked for confirmation; I nodded—“are probably just roughing it or something. You didn’t tell me that he had made friends with a dog.”

  “They get along great,” I said. “They’re the solution to each other’s boredom. I think Joshua likes Ralph better than he likes me.”

  “Well, that’s good news, at the very least. Anyway, I expect Joshua will be back soon enough. Try to relax a bit.”

  I snorted just a little. “Now if I could just get The Biz off my back, I’d be set.”

  “Some of that’s been taken care of,” Carl said. “The Times is doing a story on The Biz, you know.”

  “They called me this morning,” I admitted, “I’ve been sort of dreading calling them back.”

  “I’ve already talked to them,” Carl said. “Gave them a nice long chat about how The Biz took our company’s innovative mentoring policy and made it look like you were having a nervous breakdown. I said that if you were having a nervous breakdown, then I and several of the senior agents were also having them, since we’ve also started mentoring some of our newer agents.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Actually, I did,” Carl said. “It keeps the bad press to a minimum. I’m not blaming you about it—this Van Doren character was already working on something, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with him. Anyway, the mentoring idea is not a bad one; we’ve been a sink-or-swim agency long enough. It might do some good to do things the other way for a while.”

  “I’m surprised you found out about it,” I said.

  “I asked Miranda,” Carl said. “She seems to think highly of it and you.”

  “I think highly of her as well,” I said. “Actually, I’m hoping to get her a raise.”

  “Give her a ten percent hike,” Carl said, “but tell her to keep quiet about it. We’ve been cracking down on raises recently. But I figure she deserves it, or will by the time this whole thing is through. Which reminds me, since you thought of the mentoring program, you’ve won our Annual Innovation in Agenting Award. Congratulations.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I’ve never heard of this award before.”

  “It’s the first annual,” Carl said. “Don’t get too excited. I’ve already told the Times you’ve donated the cash award to the City of Hope.”

  “That was very nice of me,” I said.

  “It was,” Carl agreed. “The point of all this is that now, rather than being looked upon as someone who is cracking up, which is interesting and creates press, you look like someone whose eye is on the ball and whose heart is in the right place, which is boring and no one gives a damn about. The Biz, properly, looks like a rag filled with poor reporting. And Ben Fleck lo
oks to have gotten his. Everything works out.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I thought I was fired for sure.”

  “Well, I’ll be honest with you, Tom,” Carl said. “It’s not exactly the way I wanted it. We’ve cleared most of these distractions away this time. Now do me the favor of not requiring me to pull another deus ex machina. I don’t really like it, and it brings more attention to us than I want. Fair enough?”

  I sensed the extreme irritation that lay directly under Carl’s placid statement. He may not have been blaming me for anything that had happened, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t reflect on me. I was now going to have to work twice as hard to keep from pissing him off in the future. I figured, sooner or later, given the way things had gone so far, I was doomed.

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “Good,” Carl said. He clapped his hands together. “You like ice cream? There’s this place nearby that has the best soft-serve ice cream in LA. Let’s go get some.”

  The ice cream was as good as Carl promised; first it spiraled out of an ice cream maker, then it was dipped into chocolate that formed a hard candy shell. We sat outside the shop and watched rollerskaters and gulls go by.

  “You know what I’d really like to know,” I said.

  Carl was wiping off his chin from where some chocolate had smudged it. “I’m sure you’ll tell me,” he said.

  “I will indeed,” I said. “I’d like to know how you met up with our smelly little space friends in the first place. And I’d like to know how Joshua got his name.”

  “Lunchtime is almost over,” Carl said. “I don’t know that I have time to go into it right now.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, risking a little familiarity. “You’re one of the most powerful men on this half of the continent. If you have a meeting, they’ll wait.”

  Carl bit into his ice cream. “I guess that’s true. All right, then. Here it is.”

  CHAPTER Ten

  You think of the human race meeting the first alien species, and you think of Close Encounters or maybe The Day the Earth Stood Still: big production numbers involving scientists, government officials, and a lot of background music. The fact of the matter is the first human contact with aliens happened on the phone. It’s a letdown if you’re into grand scale entrances, but in retrospect, I find it comforting, and, now that I think of it, indicative of the Yherajk: they were dying to meet us, but they’re polite enough to make sure they’re wanted.

  At the time, though, I thought it was a crank call. Of course; who thinks aliens are going to use the phone?

  The phone call came at about a quarter past eleven. I’d just gotten back from the premiere of Call of the Damned; I skipped the after-party because I didn’t want to have to tell anyone what I had really thought of the movie. Elise was in Richmond, Virginia, on her book tour—I remember her leaving a message and telling me she was thinking we should get a horse farm out there for when we retire. I mean, really—what the hell am I going to do with horses? But she’s a horsey type. Never got over it as a girl.

  I was sitting in my lounger with my second beer, listening to Fritz Coleman talk about one of those annual meteor showers. Perseids or Leonids. Can never remember which is which. Fritz was going on about it when the phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi,” the voice on the other end said. “My name is Gwedif. I’m a representative of an alien race that is right now orbiting high above your planet. We have an interesting proposition, and we’d like to discuss it with you.”

  I glanced over to the LED readout on the phone, which displays caller ID information. There wasn’t any. “This doesn’t involve Amway products, does it?” I asked.

  “Certainly not,” Gwedif said. “No salesmen will come to your door.”

  Thanks to the beer, I was just mellow enough not to do what I usually do with crank calls, which is hang up. And anyway, this one was sort of interesting; usually when I get random calls, it’s some wannabe actor who’s looking for representation. I was bored and Fritz had given way to commercials, so I kept going.

  “A representative of an alien race,” I said. “Like one of those Heaven’s Gate folks? You following a comet or something?”

  “No,” Gwedif said. “I’m one of the aliens myself. And we passed by Hale-Bopp on the way in. No spaceships that we could see. Those people didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Actually one of the aliens,” I said. “That’s new. Tell me, does this bit work with other folks? I mean, I’m loving it, personally.”

  “I don’t know,” Gwedif said. “We haven’t called anyone else. Mr. Lupo, we know it sounds unbelievable, but we figured this was the best way to go—cut the ooh-ah Spielberg stuff and get right to the point. Why be coy? We know you like to get right to business. We saw that PBS documentary.”

  You remember that thing, Tom—they had a film crew from KCET follow me around for a week about a year ago, when I was putting the Call of the Damned package together over there at Sony. They actually ran it in a theater before they ran it on TV, so it’d be eligible for Oscar consideration. I’m pretty sure they can write off any votes from the Sony suits; the documentary makes it look like I rolled them. Well, maybe I did.

  Anyway, the “aliens” saw it, and thus, the upfront phone call. And now they wanted to arrange a meeting. By this time I had drained the second beer and had gone to the fridge for a third. So I figured, what the hell.

  “Sure, Gwed—you don’t mind if I call you Gwed, do you?” I said.

  “Not a bit,” he said.

  “Why don’t you come on over to the office sometime next week and we’ll set up a meeting. Just call the front desk and ask for Marcella, my assistant.”

  “Hmmmm, that’d be sort of difficult,” he said. “We were kind of hoping we might have a chat tonight. There’s a meteor shower going on.”

  I didn’t really understand that last part, but I figured it was par for the course when you’re talking to ‘aliens.’ “All right,” I said. “Let’s chat tonight.”

  “Great,” Gwedif said. “I’ll be down in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Swell,” I said. “You going to need anything? A snack? A beer?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said, “though I’d appreciate it if you’d turn on your pool light.”

  “Well, of course,” I said. “Everyone knows to turn on their pool light when aliens drop by.”

  “See you soon,” Gwedif said, and hung up.

  I hauled myself out of the lounger, clicked off the TV, and went to the sliding glass door that leads to the pool area. The pool’s light switch is right by the door, so I clicked it on as I headed out the door. You’ve never been to our place, Tom, but we have a huge pool—Olympic-sized. Elise was a swimmer at UCSD and still uses it to stay in shape. I wade around in the shallow end of the pool, myself—I float better than I swim.

  I plopped down into a patio chair and sucked on my beer and thought about what I had just done. I never invite strangers over to the house, even sane ones, and now I had just invited someone who said he was a representative of an alien species over for a chat. The more I thought about it, of course, the more stupid it seemed. About ten minutes of this, I had become convinced that I had just set myself up for some sort of ritual Hollywood murder, the kind where the newscasters start off their stories by saying “The victim appeared to know his assailant—there was no struggle of any kind,” and then pan to walls, which are sponge-painted with blood. I stood up to go back into the house and phone the police, when I noticed a meteor streaking across the sky.

  This in itself was no big deal. There was meteor shower going on, after all, and my house is high up enough in the hills that the light pollution isn’t so bad; I’d been seeing little meteor streaks the entire time I was sitting there. But most of them were small, far off, and lightning quick; this one was large, close, and dropping its way through the sky directly towards my house. It looked like it was moving
slow, but as I stared at it, I realized that it was going to impact in about five seconds. Even if I hadn’t been paralyzed, staring at it, I doubted I could have made it into the house. It looked like I wouldn’t have to worry about being murdered by psychopaths, after all—I was going to be struck down by a meteor instead. At this point, some absurdly rational chunk of my consciousness piped in with a thought: Do you realize the odds on getting hit by a meteor?

  About two seconds to impact, the meteor shattered with a tremendous sonic boom, the tiny pieces of the rock vaporizing in the atmosphere like a sudden fireworks display. I stared dumbly at the point of the explosion, blinking away the afterimages, when I heard a far-off whistling sound, getting closer. I saw it a fraction of a second before it hit my pool—a chunk of meteor that had to be the size of a barrel, whirling end over end. The explosion of the meteor must have acted like a brake on its momentum, because if something that size had hit my backyard at the speed the meteor had been going, neither I nor any of my neighbors would have been around to tell the tale.

  As it was, it hit the pool like a bus, and I was hit by a tidal wave of suddenly hot pool water. Steam fumed from where it dropped, in the deep end. I regained enough of my senses to wonder how much the pool damage was going to cost me, and if meteor strikes were covered by my home insurance. I doubted they were. Several pool lights had been extinguished by the impact; I went back to the door and turned them off, so as not to have electrified water, and then turned on the main patio lights to get a closer look at the damage.

  Miraculously, the pool seemed in good shape, if you didn’t count the broken pool lights. The pool water was still bubbling where the meteor had gone in, but even so, I could see enough through the water to see that the concrete appeared to be uncracked. The meteor chunk had come in at just the right angle into the pool; the mass of the water, rather than the mass of the concrete, absorbed the impact. The water level of the pool was a good foot lower than it had been pre-impact, however.

  If my neighbors heard anything, they gave no indication—or at least, I never heard them if they had. The walls around the backyard are twelve feet high; I had had them built around 1991, when my next-door neighbor was a heavy metal drummer. I had gotten sick of listening to his parties and watching him and his women having cocaine-fueled orgies in the hot tub, and it was easier to build the walls than to get him to move. As it turns out, I needn’t have bothered; about a week after the walls were up, his wife filed for divorce and he had to sell the house as part of the settlement. George Post lives there now. Plastic surgeon. Nice neighbor. Quiet.