Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

I shook my head. “It’s what they’ve been waiting for us to communicate to them. Just like Aunt Judith.”

“Aunt Judith?”

“I’ll explain later. Right now we’ve got to prove we’re civilized before the Altairi leave.”

“And how do we do that?”

“We sing to them, or rather, the All-City Holiday Ecumenical Sing does.”

“What do we sing?”

I wasn’t sure it mattered. I was pretty certain what they were looking for was proof we could cooperate and work together in harmony, and in that case, “Mele Kalikimaka” would work as well as “The Peace Carol.” But it wouldn’t hurt to make things as clear to them as we could. And it would be nice if it was also something that Reverend Thresher couldn’t use as ammunition for his Galaxywide Christian Crusade.

“We need to sing something that will convince the Altairi we’re a civilized species,” I said, “something that conveys goodwill and peace. Especially peace. And not religion, if that’s possible.”

“How much time have we got to write it?” Calvin asked. “And we’ll have to get copies made—”

My cell phone rang. The screen showed it was Dr. Morthman. “Hang on,” I said, hitting talk. “I should be able to tell you in a second. Hello?”

“Where are you?” Dr. Morthman shouted. “The ship’s beginning its final ignition cycle.”

I whirled around to make sure the Altairi were still there. They were, thank goodness, and still glaring. “How long does the final cycle take?” I asked.

“They don’t know,” Dr. Morthman said, “ten minutes at the outside. If you don’t get here immediately—”

I hung up.

“Well?” Calvin said. “How much time have we got?”

“None,” I said.

“Then we’ll have to use something we’ve already got,” he said and began riffling through his sheaf of music, “and something people know the harmony to. Civilized… civilized… I think…” He found what he was looking for and scanned it. “… Yeah, if I change a couple of words, this should do the trick. Do you think the Altairi understand Latin?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Then we’ll just do the first two lines. Wait five minutes—”

“Five minutes—?”

“So I can brief everybody on the changes, and then bring the Altairi in.”

“Okay,” I said, and he took off at a run for the auditorium.

There was an expectant buzz in the audience when we came through the double doors, and the ranks of choirs arrayed around the stage, a sea of maroon and gold and green and purple robes, began whispering to each other behind their music.

Calvin had apparently just finished his briefing. Some of the choirs and the audience were busily scribbling notes on their music, and passing pencils, and asking each other questions. The orchestra, on one side of the stage, was warming up in a jumbled cacophony of screeches and hoots and blats.

On the other side, the sopranos of the Mile-High Women’s Chorus were apparently filling the altos in on my interrupting rehearsal the other night, because they all turned to glare at me. “I think it’s ridiculous that we can’t sing the words we know,” an elderly woman wearing gloves and a hat with a veil said to her companion.

Her companion nodded. “If you ask me, they’re carrying this entire ecumenical thing too far. I mean, humans are one thing, but aliens !”

There’s no way this is going to work, I thought, looking over at Calvin’s seventh-graders, who were leaning over the backs of each other’s chairs, giggling and chewing gum. Belinda was text-messaging someone on her cell phone, and Kaneesha was listening to her iPod. Chelsea had her hand up and was calling, “Mr. Ledbetter! Mr. Ledbetter, Shelby took my music.”

Over in the orchestra, the percussionist was practicing crashing his cymbals. It’s hopeless, I thought, looking over at the glaring Altairi. There’s no way we can convince them we’re sentient, let alone civilized.

My cell phone rang. And that’s it, the straw that’s going to break the camel’s back, I thought, fumbling for it. Now everyone, even the musician with the cymbals, was glaring at me. “How rude!” the elderly woman in the white gloves said.

“The ship’s started its countdown!” Dr. Morthman bellowed in my ear.

I hit “end” and turned the phone off. “Hurry,” I mouthed to Calvin, and he nodded and stepped up on the dais.

He tapped the music stand with his baton, and the entire auditorium fell silent. “Adeste Fideles,” he said, and everyone opened their music.

“ Adeste Fideles? ” What’s he doing? I thought. “O come, all ye faithful” isn’t what we need. I ran mentally through the lyrics: “Come ye to Bethlehem… come let us adore him…” No, no, not religious!

But it was too late. Calvin had already spread his hands out, palms up, and lifted them, and everyone was getting to their feet. He nodded to the orchestra, and they began playing the introduction to “Adeste Fideles.”

I turned to look at the Altairi. They were glaring even more condemningly than usual. I moved between them and the doors.

The symphony was reaching the end of the introduction. Calvin glanced at me. I smiled, I hoped encouragingly, and held up crossed fingers. He nodded and then raised his baton again and brought it down.

“Have you ever been to a Sing?” Calvin had said. “It’s pretty impressive.” There had to be nearly four thousand people in that auditorium, all of them singing in perfect harmony, and if they’d been singing “The Chipmunks Song,” it would still have been awe-inspiring. But the words they were singing couldn’t have been more perfect if Calvin and I had written them to order. “‘Sing, earthly choirs,’” they trilled, “‘sing in exultation. Sing to the citizens of heaven above,’” and the Altairi glide-waddled up the aisle to the stage and sat down at Calvin’s feet.

I ducked outside to the hall and called Dr. Morthman. “What’s happening with the ship?” I asked him.

“Where are you?” he demanded. “I thought you said you were on your way over here.”

“There’s a lot of traffic,” I said. “What’s the ship doing?”

“It’s aborted its ignition sequence and shut down its lights,” he said.

Good, I thought. That means what we’re doing is working.

“It’s just sitting there on the ground.”

“How appropriate,” I murmured.

“What do you mean by that?” he said accusingly. “Spectrum analysis shows the Altairi aren’t in their ship. You’ve got them, don’t you? Where are you and what have you done to them? If—”

I hung up, switched off my phone, and went back inside. They’d finished “Adeste Fideles” and were singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” The Altairi were still sitting at Calvin’s feet. “‘… Reconciled,’” the assemblage sang, “‘Joyful, all ye nations rise,’” and the Altairi rose.

And rose, till they were a good two feet above the aisle. There was a collective gasp, and everyone stopped singing and stared at them floating there.

No, don’t stop, I thought, and hurried forward, but Calvin had it under control. He turned a glare worthy of Aunt Judith on his seventh-grade girls, and they swallowed hard and started singing again, and after a moment everyone else recovered themselves and joined in to finish the verse.

When the song ended, Calvin turned and mouthed at me, “What do I do next?”

“Keep singing,” I mouthed back.

“Singing what?”

I shrugged him an “I don’t know,” and mouthed, “What about this?” and pointed at the fourth song on the program.

He grinned, turned back to his choirs, and announced, “We will now sing, ‘There’s a Song in the Air.’”