Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

And it was too late to do anything about it now, anyway.

She could get on with her life.

Of course, she wasn’t sure just what sort of a life that was going to be, with her business ruined and her house under martial law and Major Johnston enlisting her as an advisor pretty much whether she wanted it or not. It wasn’t as if she’d be going home from here; she’d be going to a fancy hotel in Crystal City, convenient to the Pentagon, at Air Force expense. She and Prossie had adjoining rooms.

That wasn’t exactly her idea of a normal life.

One step at a time, she told herself, suppressing a shudder. One step at a time.

* * * *

“I just don’t want to talk about it,” Ted Deranian insisted, for one final time.

“All right, that’s fine,” the woman in the blue Air Force captain’s uniform said. “When you’re ready, though, give us a call. Any time.” She shook his hand and started to turn away.

“It wasn’t…” Ted began. She turned back. He hesitated.

“Was it really…” he began again.

“Most of it, anyway,” she said, understanding his incomplete question. “I don’t know the details; maybe part of it was illusion. Most of it was real, though, yes; you’ve had an unprecedented experience, one you weren’t prepared for, and you’ve been trying to handle it, trying to cope with things no one should ever have to cope with.” She didn’t mention that this was a modified version of the standard speech she gave to people who had cracked under the stress of combat or long imprisonment.

She’d never had to counsel anyone who’d fallen into another universe before.

“You go on home,” she told him. “Take time off if you need it-we’ll certify whatever you need, as far as that goes. You can tell people the truth, or tell them that you’ve been held hostage by terrorists-that’s the easiest cover story, and we’ll back you up. Or just tell them it’s none of their business. And call any shy;time-you’ve got the card.” He patted his pocket and nodded. “And we’d like to see you again in a month or so.”

“Thank you,” Ted said.

He turned and left, closing the door carefully behind him.

* * * *

“Who did you say this was?” Bob Heyworth leaned back in his chair. Tom Boyle glanced at him from the next desk, and Heyworth waved him away. Boyle went back to typing.

“My name’s Ray Aldridge, I’m a professional psychic from California-maybe you’ve heard…no, I guess you haven’t.”

“I’m not much into psychics, I’m afraid,” Heyworth said. “You want me to connect you to someone a bit more in that line?”

“No, this isn’t about me,” the voice on the phone said. “I mean, I hope you’ll mention my name, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

“What is it, then?”

Heyworth could hear the hesitation before the voice said, “The government’s in contact with aliens.”

Heyworth grimaced, and asked, “How do you know?”

Tom Boyle glanced at him again, and Heyworth drew rings in the air by his ear to indicate that the caller was a nut.

That wasn’t anything unusual; Boyle turned away.

“They told me,” Aldridge answered. “They brought me here to see if I could help them.”

Heyworth made a wordless noise that meant roughly, “Go on.”

“See, they think that some psychic messages I reported back in the spring might have been a genuine contact with these people, who come from a galactic empire in another universe, so they brought me here to see if I’d get any more messages.”

“And have you?”

“No, but…listen, I know you think psychics are all fakes, and I’m not going to try to convince you of that part, because most of it is fake, but look, the FBI brought me here, to talk to people from Air Force intelligence, and they’ve got people who came from this other universe, and they’ve been talking about how they have some kind of ship out in Maryland, in a place called Goshen-look, I’m afraid they might be trying to cover it all up, and I don’t want that.”

Heyworth blinked.

He had seen the phony spaceship in Goshen; the paper had been getting calls about it ever since someone had dumped it there months ago, back in April or May, and like most of the reporters he had eventually gotten curious enough to drive out and take a look at it.

And like all the others, he hadn’t found anyone who knew anything about it. The lady who owned the place was never home, the government men who stopped by every so often to check on the place wouldn’t talk-no one could make a story out of it. Jessie Wilber from Style had tried to do a sort of human interest piece on the neighborhood reaction to this mysterious object, but it hadn’t gone anywhere; most of the neighbors wouldn’t talk about it, and the feds had given her a friendly warning that there were privacy considerations, that Ms. Jewell, the home owner, was lawyer-happy.

So at first, when Heyworth made the connection, he thought this might be something interesting after all, that maybe somebody would finally explain that silly contraption and make it something more than a back-page filler.

Then he decided that no, this phony psychic had heard about the ship and had just figured it would be a good way to cash in; really, it was a wonder there weren’t half a dozen cults popping up around it already.

But on the other hand-the psychic knew that the government agency watching the ship was Air Force, not one of the civilian outfits, even though the people who checked on it usually weren’t in uniform. Heyworth only knew that himself because, in the proper reportorial manner, he had demanded to see ID before allowing himself to be chased away.

But he did know it. So this Aldridge had done his homework, that was all.

“We wouldn’t want that either, Mr. Aldridge,” Heyworth said. “I don’t think we want to talk about it over the phone, though-you never know who could be listening. Is there somewhere I could meet you?”

The relief was plain in Aldridge’s voice as he began babbling about a possible rendezvous.

Heyworth didn’t know, when he hung up the phone, whether he would bother to show up. Standing a nuisance up was one of the best ways to get rid of him (or her)-but there was always a chance he might get something interesting out of this, and so far it had been a slow day.

He would call a couple of contacts, and see if the Air Force might really have been talking to Aldridge, and if there was anything new on the Goshen spaceship.

* * * *

“If your reports are accurate, and this isn’t all an elaborate fraud,” the man in the gray suit said, “then you’re right. It’s hardly just an intelligence matter any shy;more, and it certainly isn’t just an Air Force matter.”

“My reports are as accurate as I can make ’em,” Johnston replied with a shrug. “And if it’s a fraud, they’ve sure suckered me.”

The man in the gray suit made it quite plain, without saying a word, that he didn’t consider that to be evidence one way or the other. After a moment of silence, he added, “I’d heard rumors about this spaceship; we all took it for granted that it was a fake.”

“So did I,” Johnston said, as he pulled the car into Amy Jewell’s driveway. He brought the vehicle to a stop inches from a previous arrival’s bumper, shifted to PARK, set the brake, and turned off the engine. “If it were just the ship, I’d still think it was a fake, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have called in the State Department.”

“Just what was it that convinced you, then?” the man from the State Department asked as he opened the passenger door.

Johnston waited until they were both standing, then gestured at the rope ladder that dangled unsupported in the air.