Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

The storm came in off the Gulf and rattled the shack’s tin roof. In the musty two-roomer he thought as mist curled up from great steaming sheets of rain. Drops tapped on leaves outside the window and the air mixed with sharp, moist smells of bird droppings. He stood in the scrappy kitchen and wondered if this was a phony lead. The Spanish letters probably wouldn’t help but they were consistent at least with the Latino body. Still, he was getting nowhere.

His intuition was fuzzy with associations, a fog that would not condense. The battering shower made him think of the oceans rising and warming from the greenhouse gases and how the world might come to be more like the Centauris’ moon, more tropical sea and the land hammered with storms. Out the streaked front window he wondered if aliens swam among the quilted waves, living part of their lives among the schools of fishes.

This thinking went nowhere and his ankle had acquired red dots of flea bites. He looked out the back window. The rain tapered off and he saw now the gray of a FEMA trailer back in the woods. A breeze came from it. Frying peppers and onions flavored the air with pungent promise.

He knocked on the front door and a scrawny white man wearing jeans and nothing else answered. “Hello, sir,” plus the badge got him inside.

In a FEMA trailer even words take up room. You have to stand at a conversational distance in light-metal boxes that even a tropical storm could flip like playing cards. His initial urge was to hunch, then to make a joke about it. Mr. Fredson, a gangly six foot two, stretched out his arms to show how he could at the same time touch the ceiling with one hand and the floor with the other. Hangers in the small closet were tilted sideways to fit and beside them stood a short bronze-skinned woman who was trying not to look at him.

“I was wondering if you knew who lived up front there.”

“He been gone more’n a week.”

“Did he look like this?” McKenna showed the picture.

“Yeah, that’s Jorge.”

“Jorge what?”

“Castan,” the woman said in a small, thin voice. Her hands twisted at the pale pink fabric of the shift she wore. “You la migra?”

“No ma’am. Afraid I got some bad news about Jorge though.”

“He dead?” Mr. Fredson said, eyes downcast.

“’Fraid so. He washed up on a beach east of here.”

“He worked boats,” Fredson said, shaking his head. “Lot of night work, fillin’ in.

“Mexican, right? Wife in Veracruz?”

“Yeah, he said. Sent money home. Had two other guys livin’ up there for a while, nice fellas, all worked the boats. They gone now.”

McKenna looked around, thinking. The Latino woman went stiffly into the kitchen and rearranged paper plates and plastic cups from Wal-Mart, cleaned a Reed & Barton silver coffeepot. Fredson sighed and sat on a small, hard couch. The woman didn’t look like a good candidate to translate the Veracruz letter, judging from her rigid back. To unlock her he had to ask the right question

“Jorge seem okay? Anything bother him?”

Fredson thought, shrugged. “I’d look in over there sometimes when he was out on the Gulf for a few days. He axed me to. Lately his baidclose all tangled up come mornin’.”

“Maybe afraid of la migra?” McKenna glanced at the woman. She had stopped pretending to polish the coffeepot and was staring at them.

“Lotsa people are.” Fredson jutted his chin out. “They come for the work, we make out they be criminals.”

“We do have a justice system.” McKenna didn’t know how to work this so he stalled.

“Jorge, he get no justice in the nex’ world either.” Fredson looked defiantly at him. “I’m not religious, like some.”

“I’m not sayin’ Jorge was doin’ anything dishonest.” McKenna was dropping into the coast accent, an old strategy to elicit trust. “Just want to see if he died accidentally of drowning.”

Fredson said flatly, knotting his hands, “Dishonest ain’t same as dishonorable.”

He was getting nowhere here. “I’ll need to report his death to his wife. Do you have any papers on him, so I can send them?”

The woman said abruptly, “Documento.”

Fredson stared at her and nodded slowly. “Guess we ought to.”

He got up and reached back into the packed closet. How they had gotten a FEMA trailer would be an interesting story, but McKenna knew not to press his luck. Fredson withdrew a soiled manila envelope and handed it to McKenna. “I kept this for him. He weren’t too sure about those other two guys he was renting floor space to, I guess.”

McKenna opened it and saw inside a jumble of odd-sized papers. “I sure thank you. I’ll see this gets to her.”

“How you know where she is?” Fredson asked.

“Got the address.”

“Searched his place, did ya?”

“Of course. I’ll be leaving—”

“Have a warrant?”

McKenna smiled slowly. “Have a law degree, do you?” His eyes slid toward the woman and he winked. Fredson’s mouth stiffened and McKenna left without another word.

He crunched down his oyster-shell road in the dark. Coming around the bend he barely saw against the yard light two people sitting in the glider swing on his porch. He swung his car off into the trees. He wanted to get inside and study the papers he had from Fredson, but he had learned caution and so put his hand on his 9mm as he walked toward them. The gulf salt tang hung under the mimosa tree. A breeze stirred the smell of salt and fish and things dead, others spawning. Sugarcane near the house rattled in the breeze as he worked around to the back.

He let himself silently into his back door. When he snapped on the porch light the two figures jumped. It was Denise and his distant relative, Herb. Unlikely they knew each other.

McKenna opened the front door and let them in, a bit embarrassed at his creeping around. Denise made great fun of it and Herb’s confused scowl said he had been rather puzzled by why this woman was here. McKenna wondered, too. He thought he had been pretty clear last time Denise showed up. He didn’t like pushy women, many with one eye on his badge and the other on his pension. Even coming to his front door, like they were selling something. Well, maybe they were. He grew up when women didn’t ask for dates. Whatever happened to courtship?

Not that he was all that great with women. In his twenties he had been turned down more times than an old blanket. He got them drinks and let the question of why Denise was here lie.

They traded pleasantries and McKenna saw maybe a way to work this. Herb said he’d been in the neighborhood and just stopped by to say hello. Fine. He asked Herb if he knew anything new about the Centauris, since the Pizotti fish fry, and that was enough. Herb shifted into lecture mode and McKenna sat back and watched Denise’s reaction.

“There’s all kinda talk on the internet ’bout this,” Herb said with relish. “Seems the Centauris deliberately suppressed their radio stations, once they picked up Marconi’s broadcasts. They’d already spotted Earth as a biological planet centuries ago, see?—from studying the atmosphere. They’d already spent more centuries building those electric starships.”

“My, my,” Denise said softly.

Herb beamed at her, liking the audience. “Some think they’re the origin of UFOs!”

Denise blinked, mouth making a surprised O. “The UFOs are theirs?”

“The UFOs we see, they’re not solid, see? The Centauris sent them as a kind of signaling device. Pumped some kind of energy beams into our atmosphere, see, made these UFO images. Radar could pick them up ’cause they ionized the gas. That’s why we never found anything solid.”

McKenna was enjoying this. “Beams?”