All eyes in the circle turned to Aaron as he stepped through the door. "Is this Ms. Phelps's fourth-grade class?"
"Right room, wrong year." The speaker was a gangly youth with flaming red hair flowing over his head like liquid fire. "Have a seat. The table and chairs are child-sized."
"How considerate," Aaron said as he stepped to the only empty chair left. The red-haired boy was on his left and the long-haired girl on his right. She smiled briefly as he sat down. Everyone wore the same outfit: blank white T-shirt, blue jeans. And sandals, although Aaron hadn't worn his.
"You know what this place is?" asked a thin-faced boy.
"Lovelace Hospital, or something," a girl answered.
"Yeah. When the original seven astronauts came here for medical evaluation, one of the things they made 'em do was walk up and down the halls with enema tubes stuck up their asses."
"They haven't treated me much better," said a girl with curls of bright blond hair. "All those needles and tubes. Ugh."
"I don't mind that as much as someone pulling off my clothes and demanding how I could say I was ever grown up," Aaron said. "Anyone else get that?"
Almost everyone nodded, including the women.
"Some old bat with a mole on her forehead," the blonde said. "Ooh, I wanted to belt her. But how could I? She was a hell of a lot stronger than I was. Am."
"An attempt to intimidate us into saying something they want to hear," said a boy just on the other side of the long-haired girl.
"At least they're leaving us alone for a while," said another girl to the left.
"Don't kid yourself," Aaron said. "See the big wall mirror there? You can bet psychologists and psychiatrists and psych-whatevers are gathered on the other side listening to every sound and watching every move and writing in their little electronic notepads."
"Maybe they're waiting for us to get overconfident and reveal how we're pulling a con job," said a dark-skinned boy.
"Or hoping we'll strip off our disguises and reveal ourselves as ugly, foul-smelling aliens bent on taking over the Earth," the redhead said. "Perhaps we should pull out our ray guns now and start blasting away."
A couple of the others tittered. The long-haired girl stirred.
"Are we aliens?"
The room fell silent.
"They did something to us, that's obvious," Aaron said. "None of us knows exactly what. That alone could make us alien, despite our Earthly origins."
Seventeen pairs of eyes glanced around, locked gazes with others a quick second, then darted away.
"Well," said the bright blonde suddenly, "even if we are all alien, we're in the same boat. It might be good for us to at least know each other's names. I'm Linda Rithen." Her face had sharp features with high cheek-bones and pointed chin. "I was—still am, I guess—forty-nine years old. I'm from Teaneck, New Jersey, but we moved to Rio Rancho five years ago. I am—was—a hairdresser. We have one son, who works for the gas company in Amarillo." She jabbed the boy to her left with an elbow.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm the schlub who brought us out here." The boy had thick brown hair, wide face, large nose and thick lips. "I'm a construction worker, and I followed the work." He shrugged. "My name is Jerry."
"Guess I'm next," said the boy who had talked about the astronauts. "Perry Stangle, accountant, from California. Married, one kid on the way. My wife was visiting her mother in Montana when the boom fell."
"Pete Aragon, Albuquerque." The speaker had a handsome, dark face and jet-black hair. "Videocam operator for KALB, token minority."
"Eddie Thompson, second token, black, obviously." The boy's face was wide, with set-back eyes. His voice seemed to have retained some of its adult bass quality. "Sanitation engineer from Chicago. Garbage collector, as my old man would rag me. Guess I won't be tossing cans much now."
"I'm Sandra Mellinfield from New York." Brown hair tumbled around a long face. She kept interlacing her fingers, letting go, then doing it all over again. "My husband's a banker. He's not here. I was visiting my sister. She had—had stayed home with her baby."
"This is Pam Yolbin, KALB New Mexico News-Team." The thin shoulders shrugged. "Old habits are hard to break. Pete over there is my cameraman." She also was a blonde, but a more subdued shade than the girl across the table.
"Myra Caslon, Salt Lake City." Short brown hair, round face, receding chin. "I had come out representing a church committee studying the Holn thing for ourselves." She grimaced. "Bad timing."
"Harold Coner, Santa Fe, used cars. The Holn weren't buying." His sharp face made a little grin. "I came out here after my divorce to start all over again. Oh, boy."
"Charlie Romplin. I used to drive trucks, semi-rigs." The boy version carried some of the bulk of what the adult must have been.
"Tom Cathen, professor of humanities at UC-Berkeley." The boy was thin and wiry, with smooth, studied movements. "I was studying the Holn as part of my work."
"Marian Athlington," said the long-haired girl next to Aaron. "I work in the city planner's office in Bellingham, Washington."
"I am Aaron Lee Fairfax. I am forty-three years old. I own a Maserati."
"Think you'll drive that Maserati again?" Tom said.
Aaron sat up. "I doubt it. I have the same problem Charlie does: My feet won't reach the pedals."
The boy Charlie Romplin let out a bark of laughter.
"Earl Othberg," the redhead said. "Retired. Used to own a couple of movie theaters."
"Pardon me, but I don't remember seeing anyone with that color of hair in the ship," Linda said. "And I would remember hair like that."
"How about a white-haired, stooped old guy limping along?"
"That was you?"
"Indeed." He swatted at his hair. "The Holn gave me my youthful red back."
"How interesting." Linda lifted a lock of hers. "Mine used to be brown. I just dyed it blond. The doctors say it may be permanent now."
Earl grinned. "Be careful what you wish for."
"Oh. Uh, Paula Caulfield." The face creased in confusion. Her brown hair was cut close to her head. "I, uh, worked in a Wal-Mart. In Amarillo." She dropped her gaze.
"Cheryl Vroman, lawyer, San Francisco." Her heavy-lidded eyes gazed from under a tangle of light hair.
"A-Alisa Bardnoth, I work as a secretary in a church in Stratford, Texas. My husband was fishing. I didn't go." She rubbed her cheek, looked away.
"So, that's everyone," Linda said. "Pretty diverse group."
"Random selection," Perry said.
"Not that random," Aaron said. "No children, yet I remember some children in the ship with us."
"Good point," Tom said. "Also I just noticed another odd detail: It's almost evenly split between male and female. There's one extra man. I wonder how long they had to wait before they got that mix?"
"But like the gentlemen pointed out, there's very few other races here," Linda said. "Two, I believe, if you don't count the Anglos."
"Perhaps they don't consider race," Tom said. "I can imagine them not even dividing us into separate racial groups. To them, we're all alike, the way the six on the ship looked alike to us. The makeup of the group is balanced in the only aspect they saw as important: gender. Although"—he rubbed his forehead—"they might not have realized another division, that of homosexuality. I speak from personal experience. I am gay." He looked around. "Anyone else?"
No one spoke.
"Another minority represented," Pete said.
"If you remove the gay from the mix, you have an even balance in gender," Eddie said.
"I hadn't thought of that," Tom said. "I wonder if it's possible."
"How could they know?" Cheryl said.
The conversation took a surrealistic turn for Aaron. He could see sixteen children chatting around a low table. All they needed were large sheets of blank paper and lots of colorful Crayons and they could begin work on a project some adult would have in mind. Instead, words coming out of the child-sized mouths went far beyond coloring, or TV, or school.
"—what now?" Pete was saying. "I have two kids to feed. I can't just abandon them."
"That, in a nutshell, is our main problem," Tom said. "Ever since the Holn left, we've been at the mercy of the big folk. Simply because, as Linda pointed out, we're too small and weak to fight back. When do we get out of here? Not until they—whoever they are—decide what we are. And whether we pose a security risk to the country—or the world."
"How can we be?" Linda said. "We're the same people we were before. Just a little smaller."
"Against all the rules of nature and God," Tom said. "If we were true adults, we have no business being children again. What are the implications of that? Myra?"
"I don't know. It would have to be debated among the elders of the church."
"You could lose your family," Perry said.
"I-I know," Myra said, biting her lip. She looked down at her lap, close to tears, it seemed to Aaron.
"Cheryl, what about the legal end?" Jerry asked.
She made a wry smile. "You've heard of the proverbial can of worms? From a strictly legal standpoint, I'd say this constitutes a proverbial supertanker of worms."
* * *
"There's nothing wrong with their rationality," the sharp-faced woman said, tapping the rear side of the mirror window lightly. "Especially that lawyer. She shows no signs of incompetency to me."
"Their rationality has not been in question." As soon as Miranda had met Radmilla Everett, warning flags had gone up in her mind. "All show ability to reason, handle problems, comprehend reading material, and so forth. And all at levels higher than suggested by their physical bodies."
The woman turned from the window-mirror Aaron Fairfax had guessed researchers lurked behind.
"I had been led to understand their mental faculties had been impaired, that some were babbling idiots."
"That was started by one of the tabloid television shows," Olive Greenlea said crisply, looking over the tops of her half-glasses. "Some rumors, however, have a grain of truth in them, even that one." She stepped over to the window.
"There's no reason to get snotty," Radmilla said.
"Dr. Greenlea is distressed by the lies and rumors flying all over the media, and I agree with her," Miranda said. "If you are interested, if you have been told to be interested in this, then I suggest you be open less to the rumors and more open to the facts as we find them."
Radmilla gazed at Miranda for a moment, dim room hiding most of her expression. "Look, all I'm after is to ensure these children receive the best care, and that their rights are guarded. That is the charge I've received from Secretary Fletcher. The eventual goal, of course, is to return them to their families as quickly as possible."
"And if they turn out not to be children, what then?"
"Excuse me?"
"If these people turn out to be who they claim to be, what will your recommendation be?" Miranda shrugged. "Perhaps you could hire Ms. Vroman to help you sort it out."
"I see. Please continue, Dr. Greenlea."
Olive gazed out at the group for another moment. "What you see is the calm after the storm. Right now, the individuals are finding strength in each other. In fact, we brought two of them together early yesterday, the married couple on the far side, Mr. and Ms. Rithen. He was surly and uncooperative, she distressed and belligerent. Together, they're calm, cooperative and even show flashes of humor."
She consulted her notebook screen. "Their observed responses to the situation they're in are the sources of the wild speculations about their mental states. Disbelief, of course, colors everything. Also anger, which has ranged from screaming fits to belligerency to violence. Mr. Stangle yelled invectives at the medical staff and threw anything he could get his hands on. Mr. Thompson went on a rampage in both hospitals, throwing items around, breaking glass, upsetting furniture, tearing curtains off the windows. He misjudged his current size and strength when he tried to lift a television with the intent, we believe, of hurling it through a window. The result was severe muscle strain. Mr. Romplin also targeted the medical staff, sometimes being cooperative to a point, then punching and kicking when he assumed we weren't prepared.
"Shock has been another main response, such as Ms. Caulfield, who curled up into a fetal position for three days and sucked her thumb, and Ms. Bardnoth, who has wept nearly constantly since the tenth. Ms. Yolbin tore her bedsheets into strips, and refused to eat or take baths. Both of the latter behaviors have faded, fortunately. Mr. Aragon spoke only in Spanish, mostly obscenities, for most of the first three days. Then he asked for and received a Bible. He apologized for his behavior and has spent the rest of the time reading that Bible. Ms. Caslon has wept quite a bit, not over her condition, but over her family. She also has spent much time praying and reading the Book of Mormon."
Olive removed her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, put the glasses back on. "Other responses include passive behavior, such as Ms. Mellinfield, who would just lie unmoving as the medical procedures were done. She does not move around much when left alone. Mr. Coner, however, has passive resistance down to an art. As soon as medical staffers would enter his room, he'd go completely flaccid. The staff had to lift him into a wheelchair or onto an examination table. One staffer said he'd had better responses from sacks of potatoes. Mr. Cathen was the exact opposite. He asked many questions about the test results and submitted to every test we requested without complaint but with insatiable curiosity. Overcooperative, if that's possible. Ms. Vroman hid under the bed the first few days, but took to wrapping herself tightly in the bedsheets and blanket. A couple of times we had to cut the cloth away. The calm persona you see here has manifested itself only in the last eighteen hours."
Miranda stepped up to the window. "And the three there, the ones closest to us?"
Olive looked at her over the tops of the glasses. "Ms. Athlington displayed no overt emotion, no physical reaction. She showed curiosity about her situation, taking time to examine herself in the mirror, an activity almost all of the others avoided. She seems to be the most introspective of the group." Her glance returned to the screen. "Mr. Fairfax also has been subdued, although he has wept quietly several times. He paces his room constantly."
Miranda nodded. "And Mr. Othberg?"
"Mr. Othberg." Olive's lips shaped into a slight smile. "Mr. Othberg has been somewhat mischievous lately."
* * *
"There's a shady table over there." Earl gestured at a round metal table with glass top surrounded by four white-painted metal chairs. The branches of an elm tree stretched over it, blocking bright sun. Earl, Aaron, and Marian each sat down at the table after much pushing and scraping of chairs.
"Everything's so damn big now," Marian muttered as she tried to find a comfortable position.
"They're probably still watching or listening," Aaron said.
"My, my, trusting soul, aren't we?" Marian brushed a long lock of hair back.
"We are dealing with government nincompoops, you know."
Earl leaned forward. "Just for the record," he said, ducking below the tabletop, "and for any hidden microphones," he turned, spoke close to his chair back. "Aaron Lee Fairfax, who owns a Maserati, said that. Me, I'm just," he turned toward a piñon tree growing not far from them, "an average Joe, smiling and waving at the hidden cameras." He did both in the direction of the tree.
Marian and Aaron chuckled, and when that died, all three cast glances at each other.
"Why us?" Marian finally said.
Earl shrugged. "Maybe we said something to offend them."
"Seems to me they'd be offended by that tent city at the base of the ship," Aaron said, running a finger across the glass tabletop. "There was some weird stuff going on. I thought I'd time-warped to Woodstock or something."
* * *
Electronic music competed with sitar and African chants as Aaron had approached the booths and trailers, some of which had been around long enough to have grass and wildflowers growing underneath. The June sun beat down on him out of a cloudless sky. He'd had to walk through an unpaved parking lot, and his dark-brown shoes had turned grayish-white under a coat of dust. (And yet, later, he would remember their shine as they sat side-by-side on the ground.)
He barely glanced at a painting of a Holn standing at the edge of a cliff above a group of nude humans, all reaching upward to catch the light rays emanating from the creature. However, a hefty chunk of smoky quartz nearly a foot high in the next booth caught his eye. As he turned it so the light reflected off the facets, a scrawny, shirtless man approached, faded denim pants seemingly hanging on the man's pelvic bone.
"It's the best chunk I've seen in a long time, man." He pushed back his long, stringy hair. A matching beard fell from his lower face to mid-chest.
"I agree."
"The energy vibes from the Holn ship have turned it this lovely color. It was clear when I brought it—"
"Bullshit," Aaron snapped. "It got smoky from being near a radioactive source."
A grin split the beard. "Yeah, OK, you know why it turned smoky, and I know why, but some people, man, just go ozone when they hear that. They think the thing'll mutate them."
"Well, I didn't come to buy crystals," he said, setting it down. "I came to visit the Holn."
"Yeah, go ahead, man. You need to do that. I'll hold it until you get done. Here's my card."
"The Astral Dance, Sedona, Arizona," the silver-ink-on-blue card said, "Argon Donnell, prop."
"Maybe the vibes'll add some more color while you're in there." Another grin.
* * *
Back in the courtyard, Marian stirred. "And you never saw the quartz guy again."
"Nope. Lost his card, too. It wasn't with my stuff when they gave it back. He'd probably be tickled to think the Holn still might have it."
"I came up the other side," she said. "Got stuck parking pretty far away, too. I was wondering what the hell was going on."
* * *
"Of course it's the last of the days, honey, it's in the Bible." The obese woman had sat on a tiny chair, knitting, folds of dress draped over her like a collapsed tent.
"The Bible doesn't say anything about visits from extraterrestrials."
"It does if they're devils."
"Or angels." That from a thin woman stepping through a curtain. "Soon the Holn will throw off their disguises and reveal their true selves as radiant angels. Gabriel might even blow his trumpet from right on top of that space ship."
"I see."
"Devils or angels, we will soon know," the knitter said without looking up. "The end of the world is near and the Thousand-year Reign of Christ begins. Those who believe, who have always believed, will be taken up in the Rapture."
Marian moved on, finding only a few things of interest. In one booth watched over by a thin youth with a shaved head, a large, vivid painting depicted three slavering Holn-caricatures watching a fourth deftly strap a screaming, nearly-nude young blond woman down onto a table with one pair of tentacles while using a single tentacle to rip what was left of her shorts off and yet another to fondle a voluptuous breast. Marian had to leave quickly before she burst out laughing.
As she walked by the last booth she heard a man in a maroon beret over shorn hair, a green T-shirt that barely hid a mass of body hair, and the ubiquitous camo pants tell a rapt elderly couple, "When the time comes, this side of the road will be the first line of defense. We'll let the Holn have the space cases over there on the other side of the DMZ. It'll distract them while we establish a defense perimeter."
* * *
"Didn't buy anything from the guy?" Aaron said, still running his finger across the surface of the table.
"Ugh, no." Marian said.
"I didn't see any of that stuff," Earl said. "'Cause I was handicapped, my taxi driver was allowed to drive me right to the Holn door. I mean, I saw the booths and stuff, but only through the windows. Never got a chance to see the charming denizens close up."
Aaron shifted in his chair. "Well, I'm sorry, it didn't look like a space ship."
In three minds, the image had to have been the same: The odd truncated flat-sided cylinder looming behind the "crew cabin" squatting on the ground in front, both with a dull finish of flat gray, but not metallic.
"I thought it looked like a hot dog stand, or a pizza place," Marian said. "The little part, in front."
The engine array stood five stories; the cabin two.
"Handicapped accessible," Earl said. "Easy on us old goats."
Marian stretched, shoved a lock of wayward hair aside. "I remember seeing Linda Rithen talking, I assume to her husband. Over by the comet display, discussing the merits of artificial turf on golf courses."
"I suppose all the group had come in by then," Aaron said. "Plus a few others, remember? The pregnant woman, for instance, and those three black kids."
"I remember seeing that woman on TV later, really agitated because of her narrow escape," Marian said. "'What would they have done to my baby?' she kept saying over and over."
Aaron turned to her. "Nothing. The Holn had no intention of taking her, or any of those kids. Don't you see? If we had left before the pregnant lady or those kids, we would not have been captured. She left, the kids left, and boom!"
"I remember you, too, Earl," Marian said softly. "You were—" She suddenly burst into laughter. "I was going to say, you were a completely different man then."
Earl and Aaron also laughed. "Ain't that the damn truth. Boy." He laughed again. "More than you know. I remember you, too. That kid in the glowing orange shorts bumped me and made me lose balance. I would have fallen on my fanny if you hadn't been there to catch me. You scared the hell out of me."
"I almost fell myself. I guess I yelped—"
"That's not what I meant. You were young, and, oh, man, so lovely—"
"I wa—am forty-one, Earl."
"So? I was almost forty when you were born. You were young to me, lady, young and beautiful. And I was positive young and beautiful women wanted no part of me. Old, and sick, and crippled, and dying, piece by piece."
Earl sat quietly looking at his hands. He was taking deep breaths and moisture rimmed his eyes.
"If I told you life was over for me, you might think I was just exaggerating. At seventy-nine years, it was a pretty good chunk. But now it was all behind me, and in front was just more pain and misery. I saw my wife and son die in a stupid car crash. First the arthritis, hobbling both knees, I couldn't walk, sit down, do anything without pain. Then the cancer came and they took my bladder out, and put in a new artificial replacement. Risky, they said, 'cause it was experimental, but what the hell, I was old and it really didn't matter if it failed, it would at least give my suffering a noble purpose. There was still a hole, though, plugged with a valve I had to operate by hand, so I couldn't pee like normal people did. It wasn't so bad I guess, but . . . never mind. Just another step toward putrefaction. I was rotting away like all the other near-dead corpses in the home. I'd had enough. If the Reaper wanted to come, then let him come, he wouldn't get any static from me." He clenched his teeth and uttered a strange noise.
"Earl—" Aaron started.
"No, no," he said with a quick snap of his head, causing strands of hair to fall across his brow. "Mark Twain called them the 'jimjams' and I get them every time I think about my life until June 10."
"Where did you live?" Marian asked.
"Oh, uh, Wisconsin."
"And you came all the way down here? In your condition? Why?"
Earl leaned back, but slipped and thumped against the chair back. He laughed softly. "Still not used to my new size.
"The one thing that snagged my interest during all of this bladder stuff was the Holn, the alien ship that landed in New Mexico, a place I'd never been. The operation took place soon after the ship landed, and I just devoured the news. I became obsessed with learning everything I could. I'm stubborn and singleminded. I glom onto something and I won't let go. This time it was worse. I limped out of the nursing home—without telling them where I was going—into a cab and onto a plane and found a cab driver at the Albuquerque airport willing to take me directly to the site. No hotel reservation, I'd get one later. I just wanted to get to the site before someone came after me."
He ran a hand through his thick hair, looked first at Marian, then at Aaron, who sat transfixed. "Did I have mystical calling to come? No. I just wanted to see the ship, walk on the ship, touch the interstellar spacecraft before I became too feeble to move. My first reservation was for the day after I actually came, but the airline called and said I'd save three hundred dollars if I went right away. The hell with the money, I just wanted to get here. And five minutes, five minutes, later and the ship's doors would have shut and I'd of been left outside."
He looked at Aaron.
"After the Holn left, they found the clothes I had worn—shoes, socks, pants, underwear, everything—in a neat little stack on top of the suitcase I'd brought. And nothing was missing from that. What they did not find, though, was my fake damn bladder and the valves and tubes. I have this picture of it on display in the Holn ship with a sign saying 'A Sample of Primitive Human Medicine.'" He laughed out loud, turned to Marian. "Fell out of bed this morning. Misjudged the size of the bed and the size of my body and just tumbled out, whump. A few weeks ago, that would have meant lying in a heap, cursing the pain, perhaps leaking from a bent pee valve. Instead, I leaped back onto the bed and started jumping up and down on it. The nurse caught me—and scolded me." He laughed again, a long laugh that echoed off the concrete around them.
"Mister Othberg," Aaron said in a falsetto voice, "you're acting like a child."
Earl whooped with laughter; Aaron couldn't stop himself from grinning as the red-haired . . ."boy" . . . leaped up, ran and jumped over a bush in the center garden, turned quickly on his heel and jumped back. Heads turned to watch as he jumped over another, then a rock, whooping and laughing, then he returned to the table.
"Aaron, Marian," Earl said, one hand on a shoulder of each, flushed face turning from one to the other, "at this point, I am not really concerned with what happens next. I don't even care if we ever grow up again." He ran both hands through his hair, emitting a half-laugh, half-sob. "Right now, right at this moment, I am whole again, I am lithe again, I am mobile again. And I love it. Love it."