Didi--Day 12

"Get your fucking hands off me, you fucking pig !" Didi wove a glorious stream of obscenities as the cop jerked harder on her left arm. He caught her hand as she swung at him with her right but missed the knee coming up.

"Gahhhhh!" He doubled over, clutching his crotch. Didi twisted free of his grip and spun toward the door, but the second uniform caught her from behind and lifted her off her feet as she kicked wildly. The plainclothesman slapped her.

"Police brutality!" she screamed in his face.

He grinned, "That don't make no fuckin' difference no more!"

She glared at him, her mind racing. "What the Hell was going on?" she thought anxiously. They usually left this hotel alone. That's why she brought her clients to this shithole. The John was, of course, hiding in the corner - shaking as he pulled on his pants. Stupid shithead. The cops don't care about you.

Her upper lip curled, and she settled down, prompting the officer to drop her to her feet. She stood with her hip cocked and back arched so her bare breasts stood out. Yeah, get an eyeful, you limp-dicked mother-fuckers. She wasn't going to get dressed for just another roust. She was throwing a big, toothy smile at the first cop, who was still moaning and clutching his crotch when the detective slapped her again - hard enough to leave a bruise.

"What the Hell!?" she said out loud. She'd been in raids before. Cops didn't roll this way - they didn't leave marks. Fear prickled between her legs. Christ, maybe they weren't really cops?

The guy in the suit leaned forward and snarled at her, "You goin' to get dressed?"

She spat at him. "Fuck you!"

He grinned as he wiped his cheek. "I'd get a disease." He looked at the cop holding her. "Bring her along." He glanced at the other cop who was just straightening up, his face white, and gestured toward the John. "Him too."

Didi blinked. Johns were never taken in. What the fuck is going on?!

The cop shifted his grip to her upper arms and lifted her off her feet. It hurt. "Jesus, this bastards strong", she thought with an internal flinch. She lifted her legs and braced her feet on the door frame, but the cop kept walking. Her legs bent at the hips until she thought they'd tear off. Fucker did not care. She twisted her knees in, cursing and crying as she pulled her legs free. The uniform carried her into the hall where other cops were dragging other women - and some men – with them. Lilly and Maribelle working tonight. They had them, as well as the local wino who usually slept in the doorway and a bottle. A cop half-dragged, half-carried him by one arm. What the fuck do they want with him?

The cop carried her along with the rest of the crowd, through the hall to the entranceway stairs, where more cops were shoving more women and men. A hard-faced man in a gray suit stopped them.

"Why're you carrying this bitch?"

The cop grunted, "She won't walk, Lieutenant."

The Lieutenant looked at her thoughtfully. "God damn street cunts. Good riddance." He grabbed Didi by the back of her neck and threw her to the concrete landing at the top of the stairs. Didi fell awkwardly onto her hip, losing a little skin to the uniformed cop's fingernails. They both hurt.

"Get up and walk!"

She sneered up at him. "Make me!"

He kicked her. The heavy shoe caught her under the right breast, and something snapped. Pain drove into her chest, and her breath seized up. When she could talk again, she bared her teeth. "ASS-hole!" came out as a whimper.

He stared down at her without expression. "Get up, or I'll kick you apart right here. We don't have time for your bullshit." He leaned down into her face, "You got a train to catch, bitch" He straightened back up and pulled his foot back for another kick. Fear loosened her body, and she pissed on the concrete as she struggled to her hands and knees. It hurt, bad, and breathing was agony.

"I think you broke a rib, pig."

"Sucks to be you," he chortled. "Whine when you get there. You can walk with a broken rib. Let's see how you do with two broken ankles."

She tried to push herself up. Pain whistled through her nose, and she bit her lip to keep from screaming. She looked up at the officer. "I can't. It hurts too much", she whimpered with the effort of talking.

He drew back his foot again. She stared at it with her mouth wide, more scared than she'd ever been in her life. Spit dripped from her lips to the ground. He meant it. If she didn't get up, he'd kick her again. Maybe kill her. She bit her lip and pushed into the pain. Swaying, she made it to unstable feet. The uniformed cop who'd carried her down the stairs grabbed her arm.

"Get her the fuck outta here," the Lieutenant sneered.

She slumped into the uniform, pain pinwheeling in oranges and yellows in her head. When she could breathe again, each breath a pain that knifed into her side, they staggered down the concrete steps. Each step jarred her again, and the pain drove her breath away. The cop pushed her off of him to lean her against a brick wall. "Stay here."

"That's all from this dump," he shouted toward men by the front door.

A cop waved, and a truck engine roared. Cops started prodding men and women into a line by the curb, jabbing them with nightsticks. "Careful! It's pitch fucking black out here," one woman shouted. "God damn it," big Mirabelle yelled. She had a grip on the old drunk who reeled in her grasp. "How about you shove that stick up your ass!?"

The line started lurching forward. It stopped once, briefly, as Didi's John tried to talk his way out. "There's been some mistake, damn it! I have to get home. I don't belong here!" The cops looked at him blankly, and one jammed his nightstick up under his ribs. His face turned white, and he kept moving. "But I've got to get home," he whined - mostly to himself.

Didi swayed at the end of the line, holding her side, barely breathing, her feet shuffling when she had to move. People were being jammed into a truck up a ramp like cattle.

"C'mon, little sister," a cop prodded her lightly with his stick. "In ya' go."

She looked at him, "There's no room."

He peered up the ramp and grinned. "Shit, honey, you're just a tiny bit. Plenty of room for you." He jabbed her a bit harder as his alligator grin disappeared. "C'mon, get in there, or I'll bash your brains and toss you in." He looked as if he would enjoy it.

"I'm hurt. I need a doctor."

He shook his head. "Maybe there'll be a doctor when you get there. Now fuckin' move it!" He jabbed his stick under the hand she was using to hold her ribs. It was just a tap, but it knocked the wind out of her.

She started backing up the ramp, making one last plea, "Please. I think my rib's broken."

He pressed the length of the stick against her throat. She backed up into a wall of bodies pushing against her. She pushed back until her bare feet were on the truck bed. Someone elbowed her side, and she cried out, instinctively trying to go back down the ramp. But five cops stood in a line at the foot of the ramp, wearing riot gear with nightsticks ready - watching her with eager, hungry eyes. She pushed herself into the bodies of the truck, trying to disappear.

As the ramp folded into the truck, the smiling Lieutenant held up her dress and threw it. It folded across her face and fell to the floor. Didi ignored it. She'd seen Jacky out there, peering from an alley. Motherfucker was supposed to protect her from shit like this. She reached toward him and called out his name. A cop looked around quickly and scowled as he saw the pimp ducking back into the darkness. He grabbed another uniformed officer, and they ran down the alley.

The truck doors slammed with the metallic clank of the latch locking into place, sealing in the darkness. Someone screamed, "I can't breathe." Didi heard a whirr, and air moved around them. At least they had a fan. She breathed carefully. Her side burned.

The truck lurched, and bodies slammed into her, driving her against the doors. She cried out, and a deeper darkness whirled down on her. She would have fallen if it weren't for the weight holding her upright against the door. The weight eased as the truck reached speed, and consciousness floated in waves of splintered color, dizziness, and nausea against her eyelids. She tried to fight off the blackness. If she went down, they'd trample her. A man's coat sleeve shoved into her face, and she couldn't breathe against the dry cotton. She struggled to twist her head and found air again, clutching to the arm that had choked her. But the owner pulled away when the truck swayed again, so she managed to find a cargo strap hooked at the edge of the door and held on.

Time passed. The air became rank with sweat and shit and urine and fear, with the increasing stink the only real measure of time. She gulped air and held on as the nightmare of scraping and stinking, crushing and pain, continued. She didn't even know the truck had stopped until the doors opened, the strap being the only thing that kept her from falling off the back.

Mayo--Day 13

Mayo woke when his head smacked against something solid. He kept his eyes closed. He'd learned it was better to figure out where he was before worrying about getting somewhere else. It always took some time, and he waited for the trickle of information to his brain to collate. He remembered using words like "collate" back when he was able to keep the booze balanced in the sweet spot between numbing the thoughts and turning his brain to shit.

He didn't try to hurry the process, and it came particularly slow this time. He swayed, his head bumping against something hard and smooth with each swing. Metal clicked rhythmically. Where had he heard that sound before? He couldn't yet place it. He braced his hand against the wall to stop the swinging and leaned his head against the cool surface to think about it. The rocking and clacking almost put him back to sleep until a lurch cracked his head again - hard. This time, it hurt.

Mayo opened his eyes to slits, blinking as dusty brown weeds sped past. He blinked again. Weeds don't move like that. He raised his head and looked over the top of a barbed wire fence at a vacant strip of asphalt highway. The wires of the fence rippled up and down like waves as the posts sped past. Beyond the road, hills of dark evergreens rose to a clear, blue sky. A train.

He pulled his head from the window before it bounced again. Dead? No. That train doesn't carry drunks. He looked back outside, shading his eyes from the stinging brightness. Doesn't look like Hell - not with all that light. From the length and direction of the few shadows cast, he could tell the sun was low, and they were heading almost directly into it. He turned his head slowly, feeling the stiffness of his body. The seat beside him was empty, and an old woman slept across the aisle. She had long, artificially red hair and a short red skirt that hiked up as she stretched awkwardly on a seat – exposing gray pubic hair bristling under pink panties. He mused at the contradiction, but he didn't know her. He was in the last seat in the car.

His nerves started drumming. He needed a drink. Carefully, he shifted his fragile body toward the aisle. A murmur sounded from the other side of the seat partition in front of him. He edged closer to the aisle and peered around. He could make out people sitting on the arms of seats, talking with unseen others. Beyond them, several men played cards on an overturned cardboard box. The man sitting three seats up was a pimp he knew. His usually sleek face was drawn and unshaven, with the beginning of a bruise under one eye and his clothing wrinkled and dirty. The sleeve that rested on the seat back was ripped.

Mayo felt his own face. How long since he'd tried to shave? A week? His beard felt like it. He tried to remember and failed. He usually shaved before the whiskers got as long as they were now, but the four bottles he'd taken from the empty bar the day the thing arrived would have kept him busy for a while. Then, there'd been a dry spell. Customers had been back at the bars where they belonged, but no one would buy him anything. Most wouldn't even look at him. Maybe because he hadn't shaved then, either.

He'd been dry a long time now, but the shakes hadn't been as bad as they usually were. His nerves didn't scream at him.

He held out a hand as steady as a rock. That's expected. Someone had given him whisky last night. "Who?" he thought as he tried to remember. A cop. Blackie. Blackie had given him a whole pint of Early Times. But why? Mayo recalled the rough taste of the pure whiskey running, burning down his throat and puddling in his stomach. Blackie had been a friend, but he didn't know it until last night.

Mayo looked up and around again. "So, how'd I get on this train?" He thought about it, but couldn't remember.

Someone coughed behind him. He turned his head carefully as if it might fall off and shatter if he moved too fast. A man stood in the doorway wearing a khaki uniform with a nightstick hanging from a white belt. "M.P." emblazoned in white on a black armband. What am I doing on a train with MPs on guard? Am I still in the army? All that other shit, his drunk life, was that all a dream? He felt a sudden loss for Ruth and the kids - more regret than he'd felt in all the time he'd been sleeping in alleys. 'Cause maybe they'd all just been a dream. He raised his hands again and peered at them. But they didn't look like his hands when he'd been a soldier. They were worn and wrinkled and dirty. He shook his head to clear out the kaleidoscope of colors in his head.

"I'm not in the army. I haven't been in the army for twenty years." Mayo said out loud. He forgot about Ruth and the kids.

"Yeah, pops, no shit." The man grinned at him. The smile was just short of being friendly. Mayo shuddered. He'd seen that kind of grin before. "I thought you might be dead. You've been out since they dumped you on board last night. At least you didn't give nobody any trouble." He glanced up at the car as his hand slid down to grasp the nightstick.

"What..." Mayo croaked against a desert-dry throat. He swallowed and tried again. "What am I doing on a train?"

The soldier leaned forward with an eyebrow cocked. "Well, you're traveling, old man." He grinned big at his own little joke.

Mayo coughed to clear the rust from his throat, swallowed again, and said a little louder, "There must be a mistake. I'm not supposed to be on a train. I'm not going anywhere."

The soldier leaned down to stare into Mayo's face, still grinning. "Aw, sure you are, pops. You and the rest of this trash. We'll be there in a few hours."

"Where?"

The soldier stood up, grinning even more broadly as he glared down the aisleway. Mayo rotated carefully around again until he faced in the direction of the soldier's stare. A woman had gotten out of her seat and leaned against the pimp. Her braless breasts almost spilling from her dirty green blouse. The soldier watched her.

Mayo shook his head and thought hard about it but couldn't find an answer. He turned back to the soldier. "I need a drink."

The MP shook his head. "No alcohol. Potable water in the tap. You slept through breakfast and lunch, so you'll eat when you get there."

"Where?"

The soldier went back to staring at the prostitute and grinning.

Mayo edged back to face the window. The countryside blurred past, bathed in an unnatural light. He slumped down into the seat and watched it go by. Every so often, in addition to the swaying and clicking, the train shuddered. He closed his eyes to concentrate and see if it was really the train or just his jitters.

A sudden change in rhythm woke him again. He jerked to clarity suddenly, this time looking to make sure he was still where he had been. The train was stopping. Mayo looked out the window to see a large white shape on a gray expanse - a ramp leading from it to the ground. A truck sat at the end of the ramp while workers scrambled around it to unload boxes. Using the truck as a reference meant that the white shape was immense and a long way away. When a second truck came into view, Mayo pressed his face against the glass to see where it had come from. Ahead, closer to the train tracks, were roughhewn wooden barracks like he'd lived in, getting ready for Vietnam. They were surrounded by a razor-wire fence, the white paint worn away, causing them to blend into the brown landscape. Rows of tents stretched beside them.

The soldier leaned forward, "You're here."

Mayo continued to stare out the window as he obeyed commands to move down the aisle towards the door. The massive shape against the desert and the camp filled him with dread—something he hadn't legitimately felt for years.

Mike--Day 16

Michael Clark cussed out the computer screen. He could swear it chuckled electronically at him.

"Piece of shit," he mumbled, half to himself and half to it. Whatever that thing was up there, its pulsing had given The Genius a happy drunk despite the shielding they'd installed. The computer fans whirred smugly. This hunk-of-junk was supposed to help them (by direct order of the President) determine what "the object "was? But nothing electronic worked without shielding and was unreliable even with it. None of the monitors worked properly under the radiation emanating from the disk, and the computer constantly spewed nonsense. With perfect timing, it belched again and began scrolling something on a wavering screen. Mike glanced at it and cursed.

"More light." appeared on the screen – distorted as if the monitor was in permanent degauss mode. Wasn't that Goethe's supposed deathbed request? "More bullshit." Mike thought. "I'd get more value out of you by dissolving the gold off your contacts," he mumbled.

"E=MC2" started repeating on the screen, followed by, "It is not necessary to light a candle in the sun."

"A remnant of uneasy light? Seriously?" Mike said, a little less to himself in his one-sided conversation. Well, at least it had gotten that right. The light outside was certainly making everyone, and everything, uneasy.

Pointless quotes continued appearing on the screen, "The Earth and every common sight to me did seem apparelled in celestial light … All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty slouches toward Bethlehem to be born … Water, water everywhere nor all the world did shine … Men do strange things who moil for gold 'neath the Northern Lights." Wordsworth, Yeats, Coleridge – all scrambled together.

Finally, the screen paused. Mike expectantly watched the bulky green cursor blink, caught up in the machine's word salad and slightly embarrassed at the hope that something useful might finally puke out.

"M=E/c2."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Mike swore loudly.

"Turn it off, Dr. Clark," his boss's voice boomed behind him. "It's obviously driving you to distraction, and the rest of us would like some peace and quiet." The Ol' Fart issued the command like Moses reading from a tablet. He was bout the right age.

Mike flushed and hard-powered the machine down. The daisy-wheel printer – resurrected and pressed into service for its simple electronics - clacked to life for an instant.

"More light," the sheet read. He felt like a murderer.

In silence, he turned away from the computer and returned to the table. He returned his focus to the six people sitting around it - the dismal staff of one of the finest physical research laboratories in the country, operators of some of the world's most sophisticated optical and electronic equipment, all quietly going mad because they couldn't get a fix on the disk. Mike was just as discouraged as the others. In ten days, they'd discovered not a single clue. At times, the computer seemed to be making quasi-sense, yet mostly, it just seemed to dump garbage.

Mike frowned as the boss smiled grimly in his direction. "Let's call it a night," the old man suggested. "That thing up there will set soon enough, and we can't study it at night. Not with a planet between us. We certainly don't have any data worth sticking around to play with." He looked around the room and then grinned again at Mike. "I think we'd all be better off with one good night's sleep. We've all put in a lot of hours this past week and a half."

The others nodded as chairs pushed back and heavy bodies started moving towards their cubicles. Mike went to his office, flopped into his chair, and put his feet on the desk. He wasn't in any hurry to go to his empty apartment. He'd only think about the damn thing there too, but without access to any of the center's hardware, that might help.

He stared moodily into space, wondering, for the umpteenth time in as many minutes, what the Hell that disk was. He'd come to believe it was alien—a spacecraft—but physics said you couldn't travel faster than light, and there wasn't much use in traveling any slower because you'd never get anywhere. "If it isn't from Earth, and it isn't from another world," he growled internally, "then what is it?"

The Ol' Fart stuck his head through the door. "Mike, go home. Get some rest. You'll think better in the morning."

Mike nodded and grunted. He glanced out the window and realized the sun, and disk, had set. He pushed himself out of his chair and put on his jacket. The only light remaining on the floor was in the boss' office. "Probably fell asleep," Mike thought. He remembered being in one of the old man's classes when he'd fallen asleep, still talking over his lecture notes. His boss, still his professor at that time, had been working late nights on a special government project and rambled on disjointedly for several minutes before snapping out of it and taking up the lecture precisely where he'd left off. Mike smiled, turned a corner, and ran right into a woman.

He didn't hit her quite dead center, but the papers she carried scattered across the floor. "Shit, I'm sorry," he said and kneeled down to pick up the papers just at the same moment she did. With the resounding sound of two coconuts, their foreheads came together - rocking him back onto his heels with ringing ears and tears in his eyes. She sat down abruptly, looking dazed.

He blinked., "Are you all right?"

She grimaced, touched her forehead, and looked at her hand. "Well, no blood, although we'll both have nice big bumps in the morning."

He smiled. "I'm sure. You're pretty solid."

"I've always heard scientists were hardheaded," she tried a tentative grin, "but I didn't realize just how hard until now. The term "egg-head" is definitely a misrepresentation."

He chuckled, feeling at a loss for words. "Ya," he managed as he rubbed his forehead.

She laughed, wiped her eyes, and then looked at him severely, elongating her words as if explaining to a very slow student, "OK. Now, I am going to bend forward to pick up these papers. You are going to continue to sit quietly and watch me."

He smiled. "Yes, Ms. Crabtree." He rubbed his forehead again.

She caught the reference and smiled again, quickly gathering the papers into a folder and rising gracefully—the fabric of her skirt swirling softly about her legs. "Now, you get up," she said in the same "patient teacher" singsong.

He stood and frowned at her. "Hey, if there's anything I can't stand, it's a woman who damn near knocks me out and then stands there and laughs." For an instant, she seemed startled, then saw the twinkle in his eyes and laughed.

He recognized her now. The Old Fart's new assistant was hired only a few days before the disk arrived. He hadn't had a chance to catch her name before they had all become absorbed by the disk.

She fluttered the papers at him as if reading his mind and smiled. "My baby. Since everything electrified goes crazy during the day, I take things home to type at night. It's even getting bad then, you know. As if that thing is permanently charging our skies. But it's still better than during the day. At least I can get a few things done."

Mike grinned. "You're too pretty to look conscientious."

She scowled. "Don't tell me that crap line's ever worked for you?"

"Uh…" stumbled out of Mike's mouth.

She laughed awkwardly and held a hand out, trying not to dump the binder again. "Judith Brown. And I'm not so pretty I can get away with doing a crap job. "

He nodded. "Yeah. Sorry." He shook her hand. "Mike Clark. Brilliant, young, slightly mad, and very hardheaded researcher." When he felt he'd held her hand a bit too long, he quickly let go and reached past her to press the elevator button.

"So, mad scientist. What's got you so mad?" She glanced up at him with a cartoonish flirt from under long, thick eyelashes.

"Space," he said. "If that actually is an alien ship up there, I might just be mad enough to want to fly in it."

The elevator doors slid open, and he followed her into the elevator. "At least this thing still works, mostly," he said. "That thing makes the electric motor a bit jumpy."

Judith frowned at him. "You think it's a spaceship?"

"I don't know. It's too symmetrical to be natural. In a free-fall vacuum, liquid could take that shape. But right now, it's getting pulled from Earth's gravity well and stays undistorted, so it's probably solid. And if it's solid metal, then someone made it. And they didn't make it here – on Earth, I mean. So … spaceship."

"Ah," she said in a small voice. I thought we'd never encounter alien life since it was impossible to go faster than light. The odds are it's just too far away. That ship would have had to travel a long time." She gave him a skeptical look to emphasize the word "long."

Mike snorted. "That's a myth. The speed of light isn't infinite. The speed of light equals 299,792,458 meters per second," he rattled off in his best nerd voice, pausing to check if she looked impressed. She didn't. "So, uh, if we can measure it, sooner or later, we'll find a way past it. If this is a spaceship, apparently, these people already have."

The elevator door opened. They walked together through the lobby and out of the building. Static left by the disk permeated the air, creating unnaturally small lightning streaks in the cloudless night sky. Mike reacted as so many others had. His pulse and breathing quickened. He wanted sex. He involuntarily glanced at her, embarrassed when he caught himself. Luckily, she was looking away from him, but he saw the tension in her back and her neck. He suspected it was affecting her as much as it was him.

As they reached his red Toyota and pulled out the keys, he nodded towards the car. "Give you a lift to your car?" He paused and looked at the car, "That is, if it'll start with all this static. Have you, uh, eaten yet?"

She looked away, but not before he saw fear and excitement and a cold sort of measuring of him in her eyes. He reacted a bit like a dejected child, "Hey, no sweat either way, right? I mean, I may not be God's gift to women, but I'm not the Phantom of the Opera, either." He fumbled an attempt at a rakish smile.

She just stared at him for a moment before saying, "Look. There's something about you. About you and this … ship … or whatever," she gestured vaguely upward. She drew a deep, shuddery breath, "I'm not afraid of you. But you know as well as I do what this thing does to people." As his understanding sank in, she seemed to make up her mind. "I'm not looking for something…" she paused, waving her hand at the air again, "…artificial. But my place is within walking distance, and I've got enough in the fridge to whip up something edible if you'll trust my cooking." She shrugged, "I've heard it's not too bad. And you won't have to worry about your gallant steed letting you down."

He grinned at her warmly. "That's the best proposition I've had today."

The tension between them was like sparks down his spine through the short walk to her place. And he could tell from the red in her cheeks that she felt it, too. He did his best to ignore it as he entered her small apartment, and she went straight to the kitchen. "Have a seat," she yelled from the other room. He sat on the living room couch and tried flicking on the television. It mostly worked, except for the static in everyone's voices. He turned it off and tried making casual conversation through the doorway.

The quick meal was good. Afterward, she'd made coffee, and they idly tried watching the TV again. He put his arm casually on the back of the couch, his face feeling like it was on fire, and she leaned into it. It was nice. It was enough. For now.

Abruptly the face of the President appeared on the screen. Mike turned the sound up, but the President stared silent and unblinking from the screen for what must have been a full minute. Swallowing to clear his throat, he began speaking in monotone, as if reading straight off the teleprompter.

"My fellow Americans." He cleared his throat and swallowed again. "It is my great fortune to tell you tonight that the mystery of the disk in our skies has been solved. It is a starship from civilizations eons older than ours. This may be the most historic moment in human history. It is first contact. We are no longer alone."

He stared into the camera. His face was smiling, but his eyes were empty, as if his mind were away, calculating. "The great disk above us is a starship larger than Manhattan. It was launched from a planet circling a sun on the other side of the galaxy long before we started writing down our own history. Its crew includes people from a thousand races, inhabiting a thousand worlds it's visited." He paused dramatically, taking a fortifying breath. "The ship's commander and two crew members are with me now."

The camera zoomed back. Flanking the President's desk were two humanoid figures - while a third stood seemingly out of focus behind. The two beside the President wore comically shiny costumes, glittering with gold braids.

Mike furrowed his brow, wondering if they'd actually stumbled across some late-late show skit reject. "Ha," he laughed unconvincingly, "I wonder who in wardrobe came up with those outfits." The figures moved under the lights, and Mike realized their skin was gentian blue, like someone treating poison ivy. And there was something profoundly uncanny valley about them. They looked roughly human, but their noses were broader with the nostrils too far to the sides. Their mouths were lipless slits that moved sinuously when one turned to comment to the other. Their skulls slanted upward from the back to a sort of frontal crest, giving them an alien-cliché large forehead. Their arms and legs hung off the body at slightly different angles to their torsos than did those of humans.

Mike gaped when the third alien moved into focus. She appeared fully human, or at least a race very similar to Earth's. Underneath a tightly fitted white tunic stood an almost unrealistically ideal woman. The contours of her body were perfect. Deep, piercingly dark eyes lay alongside a straight Grecian nose atop high cheekbones. A statue of Athena, in living flesh that, breathed and shone as if her skin carried its own internal light.

The camera rested for long seconds on the three figures before the President began speaking again. "My fellow Americans, I introduce you to Ext Fall Mrrk from the Starship. "The purple figure with the most ornamented uniform stepped forward, raised his(?) hand, and blinked into the camera. Mike expected him to say, "We come in peace," any second now. The other figure shifted, and the slit of a mouth curled in what might have been a smile. Mike found himself grinning back.

"People of Earth." He began in perfect English as he dropped his hand and looked into the camera. "As your President has said, our ship is from a distant planet." They must have waited to make contact until they learned Earth's languages. Perfect, but foreign – with only a slight stress on V and E sounds indicating he wasn't a native speaker. "My aide and I," he gestured toward the other gentian figure, "are from the planet which built our ship. It's a generational ship whose name best translates to your language as Seeker. I'm the five hundredth member of my family to command. Our crew, however, comprises the many species we've met during our travels."

He paused, and again, the wriggling, lipless mouth seemed to writhe into a semblance of a smile - or perhaps a grimace. "As you now know, we travel between stars. We apologize for the electrical problems you've been experiencing. We cannot disengage our ion drives during orbit, and their emissions cause the electrical disturbances you've been experiencing. The effect is not dangerous. It's similar to what your sun's eruptions…" he paused, turning towards his companion momentarily, whose lips moved quietly in anticipation of the question, "…sunspots cause in your atmosphere. The effect will leave with us, and no permanent damage will be done."

He turned reverently toward the woman, who nodded. He paused again, then looked full face at the camera. His eyes were dark and devoid of pupils under wrinkled lashless lids. "Your race is honored by the presence of Goddess Arona. Her race is the oldest and certainly the wisest in the known universe. But her numbers are few. It is rare for it to attend a first contact." He bowed to the woman, who raised her right hand as if in blessing.

"We've come to your planet seeking knowledge and rest. We are collectors of knowledge, and we trade to fund our travels. Sometimes we trade in goods, and sometimes services. At our last planetary contact, we traded as soldiers – what your language calls mercenaries. Although we won decisively, we took losses and need crew replacements – both men and women. In return, we offer you knowledge from our collections."

The commander stopped. The camera returned its focus to the grave face of the President. He spoke slowly and intensely, "The governments of Earth have agreed to trade supplies for knowledge. The first piece of information will be how to build shielding for our electrical equipment, giving them…improved… operations in the starship's field." He paused for emphasis. "In addition, we will allow Seeker to recruit here on Earth. We'll establish recruitment centers on each continent. The primary center for North America will be in the California desert. Subsidiary centers will be established in major cities across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico." He paused again. "Signing up with the ship is voluntary, and the decision is up to each of you. Please consider the responsibilities you will leave behind."

The commander looked at the Goddess like a child looking to its mother for approval after performing well. She nodded as the broadcast ended. A local newscaster came on with a digest of the Presidential speech: "Detailed schematics for the electrical shielding will be broadcast on this and other stations as soon as we receive them. We have been informed to expect them by tomorrow night. Please stay tuned."

As the myriad commentators began arguing, Mike turned the set off and looked at Judith.

"Well," he said with a heavy sigh.

She looked at him gravely, "Will you sign up?"

He shook his head, "I don't know. Depends on what happens in the lab over the next few days. Now that we know it's a starship, maybe we can learn something about it." He shrugged. "I'll bet it's not an ion drive. That's one piece of tech I'm sure they wouldn't want us to have." He grinned. "If we don't find anything on our own, I might go have to the horse's mouth."

She sighed, with a combination of fear and excitement rimming her eyes. Looking down at her hands fiddling in her lap. "We should start planning to go."

Joseph--Day 17

Climbing the steps to his altar this morning was the hardest thing Joseph ever remembered doing. "It's not right," he thought. "I don't belong here anymore." Seeker's pulsing electrified the interior of the Church. Most buildings grounded the static to some extent, but enough leaked through to make people uneasy. It was worse in the Church. Joseph knew he shouldn't have broken the stained-glass windows so he could see the disk while he delivered his morning masses. From the first moment the starship arrived, he'd been sure it was a messenger from God. He wanted to be open to that message, but his parishioners clearly wouldn't have understood congregating outdoors.

But now that the aliens had been revealed as nothing more than merchants and mercenaries, he knew he'd been tricked. God would never send messages by the sons of Maktesh and Midian. Joseph preferred then to hide rather than face his parishioners who (he was sure) now looked at him with such contempt. Of course, no one had actually accused him out loud of worshipping the ship.

Perhaps they hadn't realized the ship was a sign. But, he'd known. He'd been a fool!

He wondered what else he'd taken for granted. How easily he'd accepted the trappings of God's authority after his parents' deaths and accepted his own importance as a teacher of the Word. His anger drove him to seek meaning from the pain until, two years later, he'd found it in the Church and been driven to become a teacher.

How sure he'd been, then. Now, he was again struggling after fifteen years as a priest. How sure he'd been that the disk was a sign - a message from God. Only God no longer existed; His presence on Earth corrupted by the aliens. How could God exist out there with beings just as venal as men? Mercenaries, killing amongst the stars. Joseph scratched an itch from the wool sweater he wore beneath vestments made from two bath towels pinned together. The sweater had been the closest he could come to a hair shirt. Not only did it itch unbearably, but it was hot too. A taste of the Hell he'd earned. If the aliens weren't God, where then was He? The ancient ascetics had used hair shirts to mortify their bodies in an effort to answer that question. He couldn't recall a story about a saint that didn't mention a hair shirt. Maybe that's how they became saints?

He mouthed the familiar opening prayers of mass. Prayers. We pray to something. We pray to something. To what do we pray now? He glanced again through the empty window frame. The disk rising behind the early morning sun into the empty arch where the stained glass of the Annunciation had been. Electricity ran down his arms, raising his hair on end and sending quivering ecstasy through him. He'd thought that was a sample of the pleasures of Heaven being offered him. Being offered through him. But then he'd learned it was a trick of the starship. Sullying him.

There were no gods to worship this morning. No gods here. No gods on Earth. He saw Leviathan moving over the deep, which spread again upon the dry land so that Chaos could win back all that it had lost. Once tamed, the great beast was free to return Earth to the primeval. Isn't this what Yeats saw? The prayer turned bitter in his dry mouth and stopped. He dropped his hands and turned toward a confused congregation. It was bigger in the mornings now.

As in a dream, he descended the steps, stopping at the railing and spread his arms. "I cannot say mass this morning. My heart is too empty. God is no longer in this room or on this Earth." He lowered his chin to his chest in surrender. When he again raised it, Roberta stared at him, and he smiled for a moment - before the dream overwhelmed him. "God is order, and no order remains on Earth," he said. "Nor will it for years to come. The aliens have brought us chaos and disunity." He wondered where the words were coming from - they weren't what he had intended to say or even what he'd been thinking.

"I'm a fake!" he shouted. "A fraud!" The words echoed within the church dome. "For all these years, I have lectured you about God, but I didn't believe in him as I thought I did. As I should have!"

He bowed his head again and lowered his voice. "Bless me, for I have sinned." The traditional opening words of the confessional. He paused. To whom do you confess when the confessional is empty?

When in doubt, stick with tradition. "I have sinned." He stood again erect and faced his accusers more calmly. "The sin of pride. I thought I knew God and what He wanted of me - and of you. I was proud to serve Him. I was proud to teach His wishes to the people. I believed he guided me in that teaching."

He paused to gather his thoughts. He raised his voice, "When the disk came, I took up a new adoration - sure that a race great enough to build such a thing would be one with God. Yesterday, that race revealed itself to be no better than we are. As man is, so are they. His creatures, not His peers. I no longer know where God is. I no longer know if God is. I cannot claim to tell you the mind of God any longer. I don't know him. I cannot pray anymore because I don't know who to pray to. He has left me; I am where I have always been."

He looked again at the faces in the pews - staring at him in shocked silence - feeling vaguely guilty for his pain. It would be worse to stay. "I must find him again." He waved upward, vaguely. "Perhaps they can show me the way."

He thought about ending in prayer. The folly of it, the absence of it, jerked him erect. He looked at the pale faces before him, "Tomorrow at dawn, I shall rise with the starship. Like the prophets, I must purify myself before I can ride into the heavens. I shall walk through the deserts to California and, when the starship leaves Earth, I'll be on board. If it's possible, I'll find and walk with my God out there." He stared upwards towards the Heavens. "If any would join me, meet me outside the Church before dawn. We leave with the sun's arrival."

He turned to leave by way of the Deacon's door, paused, and faced the parishioners. "I'll ask the bishop to send a replacement for those who choose to remain." He bowed his head. "Pray for me if you are still able," he said, walking past the alter to leave.

"Shouldn't be a dry eye in the house," he thought.

Roberta--Day 18

Roberta shivered in the lee of the Church as the morning breeze tugged at her long skirt. She shifted her shoulders slightly to ease the heavy backpack she'd managed to load. She'd been told that by noon, the pack would weigh a ton, and the August sun would have sucked the fluids from her. She glanced at the other grey shapes waiting with her in the pregnant darkness that precedes the dawn. Father Joseph stood with a man he'd called Sam, who she recognized vaguely from Church. The priest glanced at Roberta as if attracted by her stare.

"A few minutes yet, Roberta. You can put the pack down."

Gratefully, she nodded. Her stomach twitched as she eased the pack to the ground and arched her back, stretching. She'd forced herself to eat something before leaving the house, and now it made a lump in her stomach. "Nerves, "she thought to herself. Fear of what might happen along the route. Fear of what might happen when the ship rose and the pulsing began. It made her as excited as when she was a girl, and Bobby Myers from next door had put his hand down her skirt. She'd pushed him away and never let another man that close to her since. But, God forgive her, it sent chills through her entire body. Good ones. She hadn't missed it so strongly until the ship came -with its pulsing.

As a precaution against that light, she wore an orange beach dress from years ago that she'd found in a closet (she couldn't remember why she hadn't turned it into rags years ago) and wrapped a heavy shawl over her shoulders. When the ship rose, she'd wrap the shawl around her head. She wore her most comfortable walking shoes - heavy, low-heeled things she'd bought for a walking tour of Europe never turned out.

For now, she pulled the shawl more closely around her shoulders for warmth – but continued to shiver. She wasn't sure how she felt about this "new" Father Joseph in his terrycloth robes. Yesterday, he'd stitched up the sides so it didn't gape open between safety pins. She wasn't sure she approved of this Father Joseph with a gash for a smile and sunken pale cheeks. He looked like a drawing of an ascetic martyr awaiting the lions. Are we all waiting for lions with him? Does he want to die?

She'd immediately trusted Father Joseph since his arrival at the Church five years ago. He'd seemed sensible. She'd trusted him yesterday during his anguished mass and trusted him when his eyes had met hers at the foot of the altar. He seemed to have called to her, and she could not help but join him.

Yet now, she wondered. He was so different from the man she had trusted. The light from a street lamp cast twisted shadows. As they fell on Father Joseph in patches, she remembered her dream of the Harlequin that had called her name. "Why a Harlequin?" she wondered. He certainly wasn't one of her favorite characters - a clown who smelled of hedonistic danger. But there he had been, smiling at her. And she hadn't been able to turn away when he called out to her. He wanted her to come to the starship, even though he hadn't spoken a word. So when Joseph had called, she'd followed.

"So, now what?" she shuddered. She glanced at the twenty-some others waiting for the priest to lead them on their pilgrimage. Had they seen the Harlequin, too? Is that why they'd decided to come? Father Joseph had said he expected more, but she hadn't expected this many. Some weren't even from this parish. They'd heard about the trek from neighbors and had asked to come along, caught up in the excitement.

As she marinated in her thoughts, two men without packs came around the corner and stopped short of the churchyard. After peering for a few moments into the darkness where she waited, one of them approached Father Joseph and asked threateningly, "You mean to go through with this nonsense?"

"Yes," Father Joseph nodded.

The other man came behind the first. "We think you ought to stay here. That ship's a tool of the Devil. You won't find God out there. We need you here to fight the Devil's work."

Father Joseph shook his head, "This is neither God's work nor the Devil's. It is by Chaos. Only by entering into the winds of Chaos can I bring it to order."

The men snorted, and Roberta felt her adrenaline surge. One of the men snarled at Joseph, "Pagan bullshit!" He gestured toward those waiting for the sun, "Are all these fools going with you?"

The priest nodded, "It would seem."

"You're leading innocents on a Crusade that will only slaughter them. We can make you stay…"

The priest's eyes sparked from the streetlight, "Perhaps. It's their chance and their choice. It's the chance we all take. Whatever happens on Earth today or tomorrow is only prelude. Those of us who go to the Starship…", he paused, partially from his own realization, and partially for dramatic effect, "…may die. Those of you who stay behind may slaughter each other. The fact is, starship changes every assumption we've ever made about ourselves. But tomorrow has always been a chance we've all taken."

The bigger of the two men grabbed the priest's arm, forcefully twisting his shoulders into an awkward position, "Very poetic," he said, his face twisting into a caricature of thoughtful compromise, "But how about we just keep you here instead?"

Sam stepped out of the gloom with two other men beside him, "It would probably be a bad idea."

The man looked up at Sam, and his grip instinctively loosened on Father Joseph's arm. His jaw worked like a 5-year-old's—calculating the cost-benefit ratio of the cookie jar—while both of the aggressors glanced back and forth at the men in the crowd.

"Good riddance, I say," the bully finally managed, throwing Father Joseph's arm out of his hand. "And once you're aboard that Devil ship, you fuckin' stay there," he pronounced, convincing himself it had been a decision.

"Maybe," Sam said, "but as Father Joseph says, that's our choice to make."

Continuing to glance nervously around the crowd, the thug noticed Roberta. He nodded in her direction, "I've seen you in Church. You look sensible and sane. Is this your choice, too?"

She nodded. "Sane and Sensible." She thought. Apparently, that's how she appeared to others. She wanted to giggle but held it down for fear it would attract the jerk's violence. Was this what they could expect from others during their travels? Those who didn't understand? Why was she doing this? She looked at Father Joseph and felt guilt, too, for the feelings that pulsed inside her when the ship was high. When the Harlequin had called, when Father Joseph had called, guilt answered in part. "They're just normal human feelings," she reaffirmed silently to herself. But she wanted to be better than human - to overcome her body for the sake of her soul.

The man sneered at her, then turned to his companion, "C'mon! Leave these dumbasses to their deaths!" They moved off as two other men with packs turned around the corner of the churchyard.

"Sun up in a couple of minutes," one of the newcomers called. They glanced curiously at the two men brushing past them but otherwise ignored them.

The priest nodded and reached for his pack. With difficulty, Roberta swung hers back onto her shoulders. As she adjusted it, she noticed the sky had turned that strange dark blue color that signals the dawn. As people gathered themselves, the sun broke the horizon and lit the church steeple. Father Joseph took the first steps just as the ship rose behind the sun - pulsing, seeming to sparkle across the stonework. She almost swore when she realized she'd trapped the shawl under the pack. She jerked it free, feeling some of the threads rip, and wrapped it around her head.

Father Joseph had already turned the corner, walking down the long street leading to the highway onramp. Roberta took a deep breath, shifted the pack on her shoulders, and stepped out after him. The weight of exercise replaced the dread in her stomach.

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