Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

“Do you really believe that?” I asked Calvin after Reverend McIntyre had gone out.

He laughed. “I know it’s hard to believe listening to them now. I never think they’re going to be able to do it, but somehow, no matter how awful they sound in rehearsal, they always manage to pull it off. It’s enough to restore your faith in humanity.” He frowned. “I thought you were going to come over, and we were going to look at frequency patterns.”

“We are,” I said. “Why?”

He pointed behind me. The Altairi were standing there with Reverend McIntyre. “I found them outside,” he said, smiling. “I was afraid they might be lost.”

“Oh, dear, they must have followed me. I’m so sorry,” I said, though Reverend McIntyre didn’t seem particularly intimidated by them. I said as much.

“I’m not,” he said. “They don’t look nearly as annoyed as my congregation does when they don’t approve of my sermon.”

“I’d better take them back,” I said to Calvin.

“No, as long as they’re here, we might as well take them over to my apartment and try some more songs on them. We need more data.”

I somehow squeezed all six of them into my car and took them over to Calvin’s apartment, and he analyzed frequency patterns while I played some more songs for them. It definitely wasn’t the quality of the songs or the singers they were responding to. They wouldn’t sit down for Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper” and then did for a hideous falsetto children’s recording of “Little Miss Muffet” from the 1940s.

It wasn’t the words’ meaning, either. When I played them “Adeste Fideles” in Latin, they sat down when the choir sang, “tibi sit gloria.”

“Which proves they’re taking what they hear literally,” Calvin said when I took him into the kitchen out of earshot of the Altairi to tell me.

“Yes, which means we’ve got to make sure they don’t hear any words that have double meanings,” I said. “We can’t even play them ‘Deck the Halls,’ for fear they might deck someone.”

“And we definitely can’t play them ‘laid in a manger,’” he said, grinning.

“It’s not funny,” I said. “At this rate, we aren’t going to be able to play them anything .”

“There must be some songs—”

“ What songs?” I said in frustration. “‘I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm’ talks about hearts that are on fire, ‘Christmastide’ might bring on a tsunami, and ‘be born in us today’ sounds like a scene out of Alien .”

“I know,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find something. Here, I’ll help you.” He cleared off the kitchen table, brought in the stacks of sheet music, albums, and CDs, and sat me down across from him. “I’ll find songs and you check the lyrics.”

We started through them. “No… no… what about ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’?”

“No,” I said, looking up the lyrics. “It’s got ‘hate,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘dead,’ and ‘despair.’”

“Cheery,” he said. There was a pause while we looked through more music. “John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas’?”

I shook my head. “‘War.’ Also ‘fights’ and ‘fear.’”

Another pause, and then he said, “All I want for Christmas is you.”

I looked up at him, startled. “What did you say?”

“‘All I Want for Christmas is You,’” he repeated. “Song title. Mariah Carey.”

“Oh.” I looked up the lyrics. “I think it might be okay. I don’t see any murder or mayhem.” But he was shaking his head.

“On second thought, I don’t think we’d better. Love can be even more dangerous than war.”

I looked into the living room where the Altairi stood glaring through the door at me. “I seriously doubt they’re here to steal Earthwomen.”

“Yeah, but we wouldn’t want to give anybody any ideas.”

“No,” I said. “We definitely wouldn’t want to do that.”

We went back to searching for songs. “How about ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’?” he said, holding up a Patti Page album.

“I’ll Be Home” passed muster, but the Altairi didn’t respond to it, or to Ed Ames singing “Ballad of the Christmas Donkey” or Miss Piggy singing “Santa Baby.”

There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their responses. The keys weren’t the same, or the notes, or the accompaniment. They responded to the Andrews Sisters but not to Randy Travis, and it wasn’t the voices, either, because they responded to Julie Andrews’s “Awake, Awake Ye Drowsy Souls.” We played them her “Silver Bells.” They didn’t laugh (which didn’t really surprise me) or bustle, but when the song got to the part about the traffic lights blinking red and green, all six of them blinked their eyes. We played them her “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.” They just sat there.

“Try the ‘Christmas Waltz,’” I said, looking at the album cover.

He shook his head. “It’s got love in it, too. You did say you didn’t have a boyfriend, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” I said, “and I have no intention of dating the Altairi.”

“Good,” he said. “Can you think of any other songs with ‘blink’ in them?”

By the time he left to rehearse with the symphony, we didn’t know any more than when we’d started. I took the Altairi back to Dr. Wakamura, who didn’t seem all that happy to see them, tried to find a song with “blink” in it, to no avail, had dinner, and went back over to Calvin’s apartment.

He was already there, working. I started through the sheet music. “What about ‘Good Christian Men, Rejoice’?” I said. “It’s got ‘bow’ in it,” and the phone rang.

Calvin answered it. “What is it, Belinda?” he said, listened a moment, and then said, “Meg, turn on the TV,” and handed me the remote.

I switched on the television. Marvin the Martian was telling Bugs Bunny he planned to incinerate the earth. “CNN,” Calvin said. “It’s on forty.”

I punched in the channel and then was sorry. Reverend Thresher was standing in the audio lab in front of a mob of reporters, saying, “—happy to announce that we have found the answer to the Altairi’s actions in the mall yesterday. Christmas carols were playing over the sound system in the mall—”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“I thought the surveillance tapes didn’t have any sound,” Calvin said.

“They don’t. Someone else in the mall must have had a videocam.”

“—and when the Altairi heard those holy songs,” Reverend Thresher was saying, “they were overcome by the truth of their message, by the power of God’s blessed word—”

“Oh, no,” Calvin said.

“—and they sank to the ground in repentance for their sins.”

“They did not,” I said. “They sat down.”

“For the past nine months, scientists have been seeking to discover the reason why the Altairi came to our planet. They should have turned to our Blessed Savior instead, for it is in Him that all answers lie. Why have the Altairi come here? To be saved! They’ve come to be born again, as we shall demonstrate.” He held up a CD of Christmas carols.

“Oh, no !” we both said. I grabbed for my cell phone.

“Like the wise men of old,” Reverend Thresher was saying, “they have come seeking Christ, which proves that Christianity is the only true religion.”

Dr. Morthman took forever to answer his phone. When he did, I said, “Dr. Morthman, you mustn’t let the Altairi listen to any Christmas carols—”

“I can’t talk now,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a press conference,” and hung up.

“Dr. Morthman—” I hit redial.

“There’s no time for that.” Calvin, who’d snatched up his keys and my coat, said, “Come on, we’ll take my car,” and as we racketed downstairs, “There were a lot of reporters there, and he just said something that will make every Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and non-evangelical Christian on the planet go ballistic. If we’re lucky, he’ll still be answering questions when we get there.”