“What were you saying about them not being people?” Brynne asked, breaking the silence in the room.
“But how can they be people?” Kurt asked.
“Aliens look like people all the time,” someone else said. “I mean, in movies.”
“Maybe it’s an alien taking a human form,” William said. “Like in GalaxyQuest. Those aliens were really octopus things.”
“Maybe it’s an android,” Sunglasses Girl said. “Like in that book.”
“Maybe it’s really just human-looking,” Brynne said. “Evolution could have produced similar species on two different planets. The fact that we look the way we do allows us to have opposable thumbs, decent-sized brains, walking upright.”
Rachel nodded. “And maybe it’s not that big of a coincidence. Maybe these aliens sought out a world that was like their world. We’re always looking for Earthlike planets. Maybe they were, too. Maybe they were looking for a species that looks like them.”
“Or maybe,” the conspiracy theory guy said, “they’ve visited Earth before. Maybe they look like humans because they have human DNA.”
We watched the TV as the alien was hauled back into the spaceship. The screen left an inset image of the opened door and then had a wider shot of the helicopters that were hovering near the door. There was no way for the helicopters to get right next to the opening, not with the curve of the ship—their rotors would hit the hull.
“So what happens now?” Sunglasses Girl asked.
“We wait and see who comes out on a long rope,” I said.
“What about a fire truck?” Kurt asked. “Or would the ladder be too short?”
I answered. “Either way, I think it’s safe to say that this is not a good way to start an invasion. If they were launching one, they’d come out in force, guns blazing. Not single file on a long rope.”
No one responded, and I wondered if I was being too optimistic. Maybe the aliens just needed to open a hole to get fresh air, or to see what the world was like out here. Maybe there were more holes near the ground that were ready to be opened, and the aliens would come scurrying out like ants with laser guns and we’d all be dead.
One hundred thirty thousand. That was a big number. That was a colossally big number. We didn’t have a hundred and thirty thousand troops on the ground. We didn’t even have that many onlookers, probably.
“They must be miserable in there,” I said.
Rachel glanced halfway back at me. “What do you mean?”
“My dad said the cylinder shape is to make artificial gravity. It spins, and people walk around the inside of the cylinder. But they’re not spinning now.”
Rachel nodded. “So they’re walking on the walls and ceilings.”
“And what’s going to be upside down? Toilets? Algae ponds? Arboretums? I don’t know,” I said. “And there’s no place for a hundred and thirty thousand aliens to just sit and wait. They must be desperate to get out of there.”
“Then what have they been waiting for?” Sunglasses Girl asked. “Why are they just now cutting their way out?”
“Maybe they couldn’t get to the tools,” Kurt suggested.
The TV camera switched back to a full shot of the door, and we saw more movement inside. A male with a snow-white beard was being lowered to the ground in the harness. He was dressed the same as the first man, in a weird wrapping of rags or bandages.
This was it. There was going to be an alien foot touching Earth dirt, and even though he looked perfectly harmless, I couldn’t help but think that this was all wrong and that he needed to be reeled back into the ship, and the ship needed to take off and fly into the stars, and then we could all pretend that none of this had ever happened.
But he didn’t stop descending. In fact, he was moving faster, and now someone else was following on another rope—just as wrinkled as the man, but with short white hair and the obvious curves of a human woman.
The camera changed again to show a group of people waiting below, staring up at the mummified aliens. There were five of them, two men in military uniform, one woman in a business suit, one bald man with a paunch, and the vice president.
I wondered why they’d send the vice president, when no one liked him. It must be because he was expendable, and no one knew if these aliens were going to come out and start killing everyone. Or spreading plagues.
“Hey,” I said, “why is no one wearing breathing masks? Have we learned nothing from 1492?”
Brynne glanced over. “They breathe our air. That’s interesting.”
“Like I said,” Rachel said. “Maybe they’ve been looking for a planet just like ours. Maybe their own planet was destroyed or something.”
William rolled his eyes. “Or maybe they’re here on purpose to spread germs. Look at them—they’re dressed like hospital patients.”
I didn’t know what kind of hospitals he’d been visiting, but unless they were in ancient Egypt, he was full of crap.
The woman was descending faster than the man, and she passed him as she traveled the ten stories to the ground. Wolf Blitzer was using the word momentous a lot. Momentous occasion. Momentous events. Momentous news. It was all very momentous.
I looked behind us and saw the crowd had grown to nearly forty people, including the teachers, cafeteria staff, and the janitor. Everyone wanted to see this. Everyone had to be able to say, “I remember where I was when the aliens touched the ground.”
And I’d say, “I was on a couch, holding the hand of a girl I barely knew, in a town I didn’t know, surrounded by people who weren’t my family.” But somehow, in a totally cheesy way, it made me feel bonded to the people around me. I was holding Rachel’s hand as if she were my best friend in the whole world. Which maybe she was. None of my friends from my old school had called me since I left. Then again, I hadn’t called any of them, either.
The camera zoomed out to show row upon row of soldiers, their guns trained on the aliens as they descended. The woman landed with an ungraceful thump, hitting the ground hard on her heels and falling on her butt. The man landed a moment later, correcting the other way and stumbling forward onto his hands and knees. The cameras zoomed in closer, giving us a better view of their pale, ghostly skin, which was barely darker than the white bandages wrapped around their bodies.
The man and woman slowly stood up, looking repulsed by the dirt and shaking the filth from their clothing. They began to brush at each other—the man indecorously swatting at the woman’s bottom. The room chuckled uncomfortably.
“A generation ship,” Rachel murmured, and then turned to me. “Maybe it’s a generation ship. Maybe they haven’t ever seen dirt before.”
“What’s a generation ship?” William asked, a little disdain in his voice as he stared at the scene.
“It’s when you know it’s going to take longer than a lifetime to get somewhere—it’s going to take generations—so people grow up and have babies and live and die all on the ship, and it’s a whole new group of people who get to the planet. Maybe these people have never been off the ship.”
The group of five diplomats—if that’s what they were—began walking forward to meet the aliens. The vice president was in the front, and I noticed he was wearing gloves as he stretched out his hand.
There was the typical I don’t know how to shake hands stuff that you see in every single alien movie ever, and there was a lot of talking back and forth, but no one seemed to understand each other. The vice president placed a hand on his chest and did something with his hand on his head, almost like he was indicating he wore a crown, but that couldn’t be right. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was easier to signal king than democracy. Then again, who’s to say that alien janitors didn’t wear crowns and their kings didn’t all carry mop scepters. Interstellar communication at its finest.
Still, it was apparent from the communication that the aliens were impressed with the dress uniforms of the military men, and the alien woman’s hands moved from a dangling award on one of their chests to the dangl
ing tie around the vice president’s neck and back again. Then she noticed that the man in the back had the same kind of tie, only his was striped instead of silver, and that seemed to impress her even more. The alien man was the first to approach the woman in the business suit, and he pointed to the tiny flag pin on her lapel, and then at the many pins on the military uniforms, then the men’s ties, and he gave her an encouraging Try harder next time smile.
And then it was all gestures up to the ship above them, and the harnesses were being pulled back up, and the aliens seemed to be gesturing very quickly. The vice president was holding his hands out plaintively, and it was clear that no one was understanding anyone.
“Any lip readers in the room?” Sunglasses Girl asked.
A boy said, “It looks like he’s saying, ‘Welcome to Earth.’” But I didn’t think it looked like that at all. To me, it looked like he was saying, “Polygamy, polygamy, polygamy,” and given what the news said about our vice president, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.
The alien man launched into what must have been a prepared presentation, because the alien woman stepped back and let him play this elaborate game of interstellar charades. First, he stretched his arms wide and pointed to the sky. Then he pointed to his ship and made a snaky motion with his right hand. After that, he put his hands to his head, like he had a headache, and then darted his fingers from his head to the heads of the five-person delegation. He reached out for the alien woman, took her hand and did the same She has a headache sign with her hands, and then drew lines from her head toward their heads.
“I’m no interpreter,” I said, “but I’d bet five bucks that they’re saying they have knowledge they’re going to share.”
“I hope we learn each other’s languages soon,” Brynne said. “I don’t think we’ll get a lot of astrophysics insights from a game of Guess What I’m Thinking.”
The next two people down the rope looked younger. The male was enormous, built like a fullback, with broad shoulders and a broad chest and broad everything. The female was short, but beautiful. Neither of them had the wrinkled, careworn look of the older pair.
They landed and the girl fell, but the guy grabbed her harness and kept her from hitting the ground. She smiled at him. I wondered if they were a couple. Or maybe brother and sister.
The next man was carrying two large packages that looked to be about the size and weight of bowling balls, and the woman following him had two packages of her own.
Wolf Blitzer got very excited about this and a commentator—a man who had formerly worked at NASA and had written a book—was listing all the possible things that they could be holding. But we never got to see what they were, because the first four aliens now followed the delegation into a tent that had been erected nearby and the harnesses went back up into the ship, and the remaining two stood there against the cold breeze, shivering, but never unwrapping their packages.
Wolf Blitzer: “Well, that was really momentous. Truly momentous.”
FIVE
Aliens continued coming down. They were all dressed in some variation of mummy bandages, and it made me worry for the future of fashion. I could imagine some designer in New York saying “Scrap everything—we’re moving entirely to mummy chic!”
Not all of the aliens had white hair, but they were all fair. The darkest of them had very light reddish-blond hair.
A woman, who Kurt told me was one of the school’s English teachers, said we ought to journal about our thoughts and feelings. I told Kurt that journal is a noun and not a verb. He told me to stop being a prescriptivist. I slugged him in the shoulder.
He offered to take me on a tour of the school, and since I was getting bored watching the aliens—think about that: they only emerged a couple hours ago, and I was getting bored watching aliens—I agreed.
“How long have you gone here?” I asked as we left the common room.
“Since freshman year. But I’ve spent my life in boarding schools. I even have the pleasure of staying for summer semesters.”
“They have summer semesters here?”
“Is this your first boarding school?” he asked. “Most of them offer summer school, because if your parents are too busy to care about you nine months out of the year, they’re probably too busy to care about you twelve months out of the year.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“No worries. I honestly think mine just really love their jobs. They don’t even see each other. I can’t remember the last time my parents lived in the same city. They’re both in finance, and no, I don’t know what that means, except that they’re rich, but they think they’re poor because they’re always dealing with other, richer people’s money. I’m the kid who happened accidentally. You should see us on vacation: every summer for two weeks we go on a private yacht somewhere, and they spend all their time on their cell phones and laptops—we never go far enough from shore for them to lose cell reception.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“I like school better. I’m used to it.”
“Next summer you can come visit me in Miami. We’ll do normal person things.”
He pointed to a door that was decorated with fake blood and the Mensters sign. “There’s our dorm. No girls allowed.”
“Speaking of which, how strict are they with rules around here?” I asked, walking past the door.
“Depends,” he said. “They’re tasked with raising us to be just as successful as our parents, so they’re really strict about things like homework and testing. And if you do anything remotely illegal, you’re in deep trouble. But they’re lax on other things. So, for example, you can break curfew every night as long as you’re getting straight A’s. And girls go in the boys’ dorms all the time, so long as no one is smoking or whatever else.”
“‘Whatever else’ seems to encompass a lot.”
He grinned. “You’ll get a feel for it. Just remember: if it will hurt your chances of getting into college or getting elected, they’re going to punish you for it.”
We walked up a long set of stairs that led into the old part of the building. There was a very distinct change—they didn’t try to make the transition smooth at all. It just stopped being steel and cement and became marble and oak. I felt like I was stepping back in time.
“If I were a better host I’d tell you the history of the building, about how the awards in this trophy case represent Minnetonka’s win against our rival school in the 1939 something or other, but I have no idea about any of that stuff.”
I stopped at the trophy case. There was a very large brass cup with a plaque that said “First Place, Minnetonka School.”
“Well, that’s explanatory,” I said.
He pointed at a picture. “They look like they’re in football uniforms, maybe? But we don’t have a football team here. We have soccer and field hockey and lacrosse.”
“I’m gonna go with lacrosse,” I said, and then continued down the corridor.
Kurt stopped in front of another display case. “Here’s the real deal with this school. The donor wall. I mean, there’s a museum on the third floor that has an amazing private collection, but this donor wall really explains Minnetonka.”
I scanned the case, looking at the dozens of plaques and pictures. Friends of Minnetonka got their name on just a tiny plaque. Platinum Friends and Diamond Friends got progressively bigger nameplates. Honored Friends got photos, and every one of the pictures was of someone I recognized—business leaders who were always on the covers of magazines. Politicians. A Nobel Prize winner. And in the center of it all was a past president of the United States.
“He didn’t go here,” I said. “I would have heard about that from Mrs. Cushing.”
“He didn’t,” Kurt said. “His son did.”
“I feel honored?” I said. “I guess?”
“Here’s my bet,” he said, leaning his back against the mahogany-and-brass case and folding his arms. “The school has a waiting list a mile long. But when they got the ca
ll from your dad, they didn’t see a regular rich girl, they saw a way to connect themselves to the biggest event in history. You’re their ticket to all things alien.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great.”
“No, you don’t get it: this is great for you. They’re not trying to build your resume—they’re using you to build their resume. You can get away with murder.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then I don’t think I’m going to dye this blue out of my hair.”
SIX
My dad called after lunch. I was in my dorm room, scanning the internet for any interesting news that CNN wasn’t reporting. When my phone buzzed I snatched it up and answered before it could vibrate twice.
“Hey, Dad.”
Rachel and Brynne both looked over, knowing I was potentially going to get the information we were all looking for.
“Hey, Aly,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of time. How’s school?”
“Shut up, Dad, and tell me about the aliens.”
“Promise me you’re not going to talk to reporters.”
“I’m going to talk to my roommates.”
“Any of them work for the New York Times?”
“Come on, Dad.”
“Well, we’ve started talking to them. They have a machine that can translate languages. It’s a learning machine, so the more we talk, the better it gets. It’s really an amazing piece of technology.”
“And what are they saying?”
“Patience, my dear. The president is going to address the nation tonight and talk about that,” he said. “He’s meeting with the leader of the aliens soon.”
Brynne waved her hand. “Ask him why they look like humans!”
“Dad? Why do they look like humans?”
“We haven’t figured that one out yet. But we were as surprised as you. They breathe our air, and the gravity in the ship seems to have been pretty equivalent to the gravity here—this is what they were used to.”
“In movies aliens always look human.”
“That’s because it’s cheaper to give a guy Spock ears or green skin than it is to make creatures that aren’t humanoid. But these guys don’t even have Spock ears.”