Little Green Men (10 page)

"You were there, with me, on the table!"

Cesar's face now formed a large, uncomprehending
Que?

"In the spaceship!"

"Sir?"

"Don't you taste it?" "Taste?"

"Stop repeating everything!"

Had the aliens erased Cesar's memory?

Banion slunk from the car under the confused gaze of Cesar and shuffled like a sedated mental patient into the bright marble lobby of the hotel.

Scrubbs had never heard a bagger team sound so pumped up. It was the first time in all his years at MJ-12 that he wished he could have been there for a face-to-face debriefing; for that matter, he wished he'd been there for the bag itself.

Over the speaker came sounds of Mike, Jimmy, and Jake high-fiving each other. He heard beer cans popping open. The boys loved mag-lev jobs. It was neat work, flying a heavy-lift black helicopter that was concealed from sight below by means of a suspended platform of dazzlingly bright lights. The lights, of course, were the UFO. The electromagnetic clamp was lowered from the helicopter through an opening in the light platform onto the roof of the target car. The car was lifted off the highway as the driver, holding his breath momentarily, switched open the happy-gas canisters in the passenger compartment, putting the abductee to sleep.

Jake, who had played the part of Cesar, regaled Scrubbs with a description of Banion's horror over finding that he would have to ride in a mere luxury sedan. The reason for that was entirely practical: the helicopter's lift capacity wasn't enough to heft a stretch limo into the air.

Mike did an imitation of Banion: "You like be on my TV show?" The speaker filled with the sound of honking, snorting, asthmatic Team Banion! On to the Super Bowl!

"Mr. Mint on the line."

"Jack!" said Sid Mint, whose clients included former presidents, network anchorpeople, actors, pundits, funny men, self-motivators, diet gurus, investment gurus, and people with advice on how to have better relationships with your children.
"Jeesus,
are you
okay!
"

"I'm fine. Sid." His words were measured, delivered with an almost eerie calm. For the clouds of doubt and
confusion had parted now. John O
. Banion saw things in a new light. He was as clearheaded as one of the apostles after Pentecost.

"I'm a little concerned. I just got off with Denny Phelps from AACA, and he's - 1 would describe him as a little upset. I'm sure there's another version of it, and I want to hear yours - but let me tell you what he said. He said you showed up for the speech an hour late, looking -he didn't come right out and say it, but he seems to think you were sort of, maybe, had a few drinks - and instead of talking about protectionism and foreign imports, you talked about flying saucers."

"1 never used the term
F
lying
saucers,
Sid. And 1 wasn't drunk. I'm a professional."

"Hey. I
know.
He said you talked about how we gotta defend ourselves against being invaded by aliens. I'm not sure that's what they had in mind by talking about protectionism. You know what these groups want. The Washington insider stuff, what it's like to have the president for dinner, what Cokie Roberts smells like. And you give them
The
War
of
the
Worlds."

"That's an exaggeration."

"I'm with you. But he did use the word
incoherent.
Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just quoting. He strongly suggested that I refund him his thirty thousand dollars."

"I admit that my thoughts might not have been organized. But that won't happen again, I assure you. Next time, they will be composed. Oh, yes."

"Jack, you sound . . . look, we have a
fabulous
business relationship, but you know, I also consider you a friend. Is there something going on?"

"More than we ever imagined. Sid."

"We've got you booked for fourteen speeches this fall. All of them big events. You're not going to talk to these groups about
aliens,
are you? We've got ITT, Microsoft, Aetna, Chase Manhattan. American Express, Archer Daniels. You're not
really
planning to talk to these people about little green men?"

"Sid, what could be more important than the fact that I have been abducted twice by alien creatures now, not once but twice? Social Security reform? The Middle East?"

"Jack, excuse me, but - what are you
talking
about?" "The future, Sid. I have been over into the future. And it scared the
crap
out of me."

"Maybe you should take some time off."

"Don't worry about the bookings. You're going to have to hire extra staff just to keep up. This is a bombshell. But there's something larger at stake. They're here, Sid, and it's up to me to warn the American people."

Having proclaimed himself Paul Revere of the Milky Way Galaxy, Banion now turned his attention to how to deal with his wife.

Bitsey was having a hard time with all this. She had married him for better and worse, richer and poorer, but there was nothing in the vows about alien abduction. She had called his hotel room all night long, getting no answer. The next morning, Banion explained to her that after his speech to the car dealers, he'd been too afraid to spend the night alone in his room - what if the aliens came back for him? He stayed all night in the hotel's lobby, hovering nervously near cleaning women, night clerks, and other nonplussed security personnel, who, toward 4:00
a.m
., finally alerted the assistant manager that one of the guests was acting strangely and might suddenly produce a gun and start shooting up the lobby.

"Bits," said Banion over the airplane phone on the way back to Washington, "if I were making whoopee with the local escort service, don't you think I'd come up with a more
plausible
cover story?"

She conceded the point but was still at a loss.

"I've made an appointment for you to see Dr. Offit," she said. "Burt Galilee says he's the best. He handled Bud Ferrer's breakdown." Bud Ferrer was the congressman from Ohio who, after becoming addicted to muscle relaxers, had taken off all his clothes on the floor of the House of Representatives while denouncing a bill to regulate Lake
Erie polluters. (His staff tried valiantly to explain that it had been merely a gesture to dramatize the huge cost to business of the cleanup plan.)

"I'm not sure I like being compared to Bud Ferrer. I've think I've done a pretty good job of keeping it together, all things considered. Some people 1 know would be gibbering like chimpanzees and chewing on their socks after what I've been through. It's not much cheer to me that your First instinct is to hand me over to a psychiatrist. Would you be happier if they just shot me up with tranquilizers and dragged me off to Saint E's?"*

"I'm
trying
to help."

Banion had to face it: the only aliens Bitsey believed existed were the ones trying get into the country without proper visas.

"Mr. Banion," said Renira, "it's Patrick Cooke on the line, from the
Post."

Oh, God.

"You gave a speech in Palm Springs two days ago to a convention of foreign car dealers," Cooke said. "Yes."

"You told them - this is according to
several
people I talked to who were in the audience - that, quote, the most urgent priority of the federal government is preparing for a possible invasion of this planet by alien beings. Would you care to expand on that?"

Banion needed to buy time.

"Tell you what. Hold off on your story a few days. We'll talk on Saturday. I'll give you so many quotes on that theme you won't have room for half of them."

"I don't know," Cooke said. In newsroom parlance this means: no way, pal.

*
An insane asylum near Washington, once home to Ezra Pound.

'All right then, but you won't have nearly as good a story. Don't you want to know what prompted the speech?"

"Let me see what 1 can do." Translation: you win.

"Tell Steve Coll to save you few acres on Sunday's front page -above the fold."

".
.
.
Sunday,
with
host
John
O
.
Banion.
an
exploration
of
tomorrow's issues,
with
today's
leaders.
And
now,
your
host,
John
Oliver
Banion

Viewers noticed a subtle difference in the show's format: the substitution of Dvorak's
New
World
Symphony for the regular theme music.

That morning,
Sunday
had almost twice as many viewers as usual, owing to the page one headline in
The
Washington
Post
(below the fold):

JOHN'S GUESTS THIS
SUNDAY:
HIS FELLOW ALIEN ABDUCTEES

'Aliens, extraterrestial beings,
little green men," began John O
. Banion, "call them what you will
..."

Bitsey, at home, in bed, clutched the Pratesi sheets to her breast.

". . . most Americans believe in them. But then Americans believe in a lot of things. The eminent Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called UFO's 'materialized psychisms' - that is to say, projections of our collective unconscious. There is, of course,
another
explanation. They're real."

Burt Galilee, looking like an overweight prizefighter in his silk dressing gown, picked up the phone and dialed the special number that connected him to Camp David. A military aide answered, asked him to hold for a minute, then put him through.

"Stop whatever you're doing," said Galilee, "even if you're launching nuclear missiles, and turn on the Banion show."

"I am a rational man," Banion went on. "Until recently, I hadn't given UFO's a minute's thought, other than to dismiss them out of hand as the products of deluded minds. However, something has happened to me personally to convince me that we are, in fact, being visited by aliens."

Bill Stimple, the Washington representative of Ample Ampere, dialed the home number of Al Wiley, chairman of the electrical giant, in Woofchester, New York. It was not something he did routinely. 'A.W? Sorry to interrupt. Are you watching the Banion show? You might want to turn it on."

"My guests today. Dr. Danton Falopian. Dr. Falopian holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. He has worked for the U.S. government in a number of capacities. For a time he was at NASA, the U.S. space agency. For some years now he has been president of WUFOC, the World UFO Congress. He joins us from his home near Gypsumville, in Manitoba, Canada."

Burt Galilee's phone rang. It was the president of the United States, calling back, spluttering. 'A
remote
interview? I have to come to his studio on a Sunday morning? And he's doing remote interviews with UFO nuts?
G
oddamnit."

Burt Galilee replied that perhaps it was best that Dr. Danton Falopian was not at large on American soil.

Banion himself wished that Dr. Falopian presented a less alarming appearance. With his widow's peak of jet black hair, goatee, potbelly, food-stained necktie, darting, feral eyes, enormous, beetly eyebrows, and intense manner, he gave the impression of someone who was on intimate terms with sanitariums.

"My other guest is Col. Roscoe J. Murfletit. Colonel Murfletit served with the United States Army, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel after thirty years. Colonel Murfletit was part of the top-secret military team that investigated the crash of an alien spacecraft near

Roswell, New Mexico, in nineteen forty-seven. He is the author of the best-selling book
The
Things
in
the
Crates."

"Oh
dear,"
said Val Dalhousie, on her bed, surrounded by cavalier King Charles spaniels.

"He was present when government doctors autopsied the bodies of four aliens recovered at the crash site. We"ll be talking about that in a moment. First, let me explain my own interest in UFO's. Three weeks ago, on a golf course outside Washington
..."

At home, Nathan Scrubbs grinned at the television set and uttered a triumphant, sibilant
"Yess!"

Washington did not know quite what to make of it. There was no precedent. The city had been witness to all sorts of scandal: congressmen leaping into the Tidal Basin with strippers, third-rate office burglaries of rival politicians' offices, cabinet suicides, and the worst kind of all - sending American boys off to die in unwise wars. But, up to now, it had never watched one of its own declare so wholeheartedly a belief in the unbelievable. It was, as the head of the League of Gay Voters commented to the
Times,
"a stunning coming-out-of-the-closet moment." (Asked whether he still wanted Banion to moderate the upcoming presidential debates, he made equivocal noises.)