Little Green Men (14 page)

As he was leaving the Hupkin workshop, he heard a woman's voice say softly, "Mr. Banion?"

She was tall, perhaps five-ten. with short-cut blond hair and bright green eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses that gave her otherwise earthy, athletic demeanor the sexy, bookish look of the smart girl whose hobby was white-water rafting or jumping out of airplanes. Early thirties, handsomely turned out in a double-breasted jacket without shirt - a look Banion found much to his taste - and skintight white leggings that followed shapely limbs all the way down to perfect ankles buoyantly lofted on heels. Her smile, bookended by dimples, was radioactively warm. Her voice was husky, and she was wearing a perfume that had an intoxicating, powdery smell. Banion was utterly arrested. She seemed out of place in this oinking hog pen of perspiring Magdalenes.

"I'm sorry to bother you. You must be so tired of people coming up to you."

"No, no, it's all right."

Good God, what planet was
this
heavenly creature from?

"I heard you were going to be here, and I wondered, hoped, you might be kind enough to sign this." She held it out for him. It was
Screwing
the
Poor,
his best-selling critique of the welfare state.

"Of course, yes," he stammered. She'd read it, too. You could always tell by whether the pages were worn. "How should 1 sign it?"

"'John 0. Banion'?"

"1 meant, would you like me to
...
is it
...
for
..."
Get a grip, man. "Who should I make it out to?" "Oh," she smiled. "Roz."

"Roz. What a nice name." What an idiotic statement.

"With a
z."

"Lovely."

'Around here, they usually assume it's with an
s."
"Oh?"

'As in Roswell? New Mexico?"

"Yes, of course."

"I've read all your books."

"Really?"

"But this is my favorite. When I first heard the title, I thought you must be a real pig." "Well

"Then my girlfriend told me it was really good, and I read it, and realized that you're right. Screwing the poor really
is
the only way to help them, isn't it?"

Banion cleared his throat. "What brings you here? Are you an abductee?"

"I prefer the word
experiencer."

"Sorry."

"That's all right." She was smiling, looking right into him. "I'm not, but I'm hoping to be one. Soon."

"I'm not sure I recommend it."

"I guess." she said, twirling a pearl strand in her finger, dimpling one cheek, "it all depends
who's
doing the abducting."

Banion swallowed. His mouth had gone cottony.

Roz looked around the hall. "I hope if it happens to me, that I don't end up like that woman in the workshop, dumped for some tramp from Aldebaran." She giggled and looked around. "Does this place sort of remind you of a singles bar from hell?"

"I've never been to a singles bar."

"I shouldn't laugh. They're all so
lonely."

"You sound as though you don't believe their stories."

"Do you?" she said.

"I'm not sure what I believe anymore. I believe what happened to me."

"But you're different. You
had
a life before." "You look as though you have a life." "I'm a publisher." "Really? What do you publish?"

"You wouldn't have heard of our magazine. They're, well
..."

"I do read."

"Cosmospolitan?"

"The women's magazine?"

"You're thinking of
Cosmopolitan.
This is
Cosmos-politan.
Cosmo,
for women who've been abducted by aliens." 'Ah. Sounds
...
do you have a copy?"

"Over at my booth. I'm here on business. Would you like to . . . ?" "Very much. Lead on."

She took Banion to her exhibit booth, where she had copies of her magazine. He examined the cover of the current issue.

"Very nice," said Banion. studying
the cover photo, of a large but
well-proportioned woman wearing a black leather miniskirt and leopard-skin leotard top, with a tattoo, a flying saucer, hovering over one bosom. He read the cover line:

THE "RULES" OF ALIEN DATING

BUT WILL HE RESPECT YOU AS A HUMAN BEING?

STROBED, DISROBED, AND PROBED

ARE NORDICS
REALLY
BETTER IN BED?

IS IT YOU THEY WANT, OR JUST YOUR EGGS?

"Fascinating," Banion said. "May I have a copy?" "You won't find it up to your high intellectual level." "No, no, it looks very interesting."

"Our circulation has doubled in the last two years. And our demographics are getting better all the time."

Banion flipped through the issue. He saw a lot of advertisements for cigarettes, hair care, and dating services.

"How wonderful," he said, "that women who have had this experience now have a magazine they can call their own." What - he wondered - had come over him? Normally, he did not sound like the voice-over in a smarmy commercial.

"I don't suppose," Roz said, "I could do an interview with you? I hate to ask. But it would be such a coup."

"Of course. Pleasure. I was just headed to the seminar on cattle mutilation. Would you care to join me?" Now there was a come-on line for you:
would
you
like
to
go
to
the
cattle
mutilation
seminar
with
me? I
have
front-row
seats.

'As a matter of fact" - she smiled - "I was going there myself."

They walked toward the Sam Houston Room, stopping every few feet as Banion signed autographs like a rock star. One pinched, fast-talking man approached to congratulate him for having the guts to tell it like it was. He had worked in Washington in the late seventies as a civilian contract employee for the Air Force. Was Banion aware that President Nixon had
personally
escorted Jackie Gleason, the comedian, to Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to view the alien bodies from Roswell? Banion tried briskly to thank him for sharing this. He feared Roz would drift off and leave him with this lunatic. But the man had still more to share. Did Banion know who
else
from the entertainment world believed in UFO's? Jamie Farr, from the TV show
M*A
*S*H.
Good to know, said Banion. trying to pull away. And Sammy Davis! Really? Oh yeah, Sammy was a
big
believer. You think he lost that eye in a car crash? No sir, that eye was
taken
from him in one of the first alien organ donations, and nothing
voluntary
about it.

"Really?" said Banion, now walking briskly.

"Yes sir, but you won't find that in Linda Moulton Howe's new book. Do you want to know
why?
"

Not really.

"Because
she's
only interested if it moos or bleats. She doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to us human beings." "Really? Well, thanks for -"

"She's like those damn animal rights people, care more about goddamn
minks
than human people."

The man was barking mad. Banion fled.

"We need more people like you." the man called after him. "They can't ignore
you.
You've got a TV show. You give them hell. We're counting on you!"

"You're very kind with them," said Roz as they went down the escalator. "Other people in your position wouldn't be so understanding."

"I've met stranger than him in Washington." It surprised him to hear himself talking this way about the seat of his power.

"I'd love to see Nixon giving Jackie Gleason a tour of the alien bodies." She giggled.

Beauty, brains, sense of humor. He wanted to take her by the arm as they descended. With a pang, he remembered that he was a married man.

The room was dark. Dr. Howe, a well-dressed, attractive woman with the bearing of a professor, was showing slides that made Banion glad that he had not yet had lunch, and doubtful that he would today. Even worse was finding himself sitting next to an alluring young woman he had just met and watching a slide show of barnyard animals with their privies removed. Yet Roz seemed not at all discomfited by the gruesome images under discussion. Beauty, brains, sense of humor, and guts.

They sat in silence as Dr. Howe explained how the edges where the cuts had been made were eerily smooth, even more so than most surgical incisions; what was more, when the edges were put under the microscope, the hemoglobin showed evidence of having been heated to an extreme degree, as if by lasers. This could not be the work of sick yokels with crude tools. Even SRA couldn't account for the sheer volume of mutilated Elsies. (Banion worried for the future of a country where satanic ritual abuse had become so commonplace that the culture had to assign it an acronym.)

Dr. Howe had a theory as to why the mutilations were on the rise. These bovine organs were a delicacy beloved by extraterrestrials - alien sushi, as it were. Banion winced, knowing he would never again order
tekka
maki.
Dr. Howe suggested that, to placate the aliens, the government might itself be playing the role of sushi chef.

Throughout the lurid seminar, Banion stole glances at Roz to see what her reactions were to these grisly hypotheses. And all he caught was a yawn.

"Would you like to have a cup of tea?" he said as they emerged blinkingly into the lights of the foyer.

"I could use something."

The restaurant was mobbed. They were quickly surrounded by more fans craving his autograph or wanting to share with him some alarming insight into the universe. Banion wanted to suggest to her that they have a quiet lunch in his suite, but he worried that it might sound forward.

Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit intercepted them with frantic, exasperated looks, like nannies whose charge have given them the slip in the park.
Where
had he been?
Why
had he wandered off like that? There were
important
people who wanted to meet him.

Banion introduced Roz. They regarded her with undisguised disdain - another groupie, obviously. Only these two, Banion thought, could be immune to such dazzling female charm and beauty.

They tugged at him. He must come. Special persons were waiting.

"Would you like to join us?" Banion asked.

Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit exchanged appalled looks. The colonel whispered stiffly to Banion that the meeting was of a highly
sensitive
nature.

"It was nice meeting you," Roz said, taking Murfletit's hint.

"Join us," Banion said emphatically. "I
insist."

"If it's not imposing . . ."

"Not at all," he said, with sharp looks at his minders.

Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit sulked all the way to the colonel's room, outside which lurked no fewer than three heavies from WUFOC Security. Banion wondered what on earth they were guarding. A captured alien?

The door opened to reveal two Russians, enveloped in a Chernobyl cloud of their own cigarette smoke.

Banion coughed throughout the introductions. The older Russian was a Dr. Kokolev, the younger, a Colonel Radik. They struck Banion as Slavic versions of Falopian and Murfletit, only arguably with even better credentials. Dr. Kokolev, a father of Soviet rocketry, designer of the Pushkin-4 Booster, hero of Soviet science, holder of the Order of Lenin, had been Stalin's chief adviser on UFO's. Colonel Radik, retired from the Soviet Air Force, had shot down a UFO in his MiG fighter over Soviet airspace.

'Are you sure it wasn't a commercial airliner?" said Banion, who had never forgiven the Russians for shooting down KAL Flight 007. This attempt at levity did not crack much ice with the colonel.

Dr. Kokolev was jollier, in the ursine Russian way. He told the story of being summoned to the Kremlin in the middle of the night, several months after the Roswell, New Mexico, crash in July 1947. and being ushered into the terrifying presence of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. One of Kokolev's rockets had just blown up on the Alma-Ata launchpad, and he assumed that Stalin was going to shoot him personally.

Instead, the great man slid a small piece of shiny material across his desk at the young physicist and demanded to know if it was of non
-
earthly origin. It was, he said, a piece of the Roswell wreckage,
obtained
at
enormous
effort
by the KGB. Dr. Kokolev understood that much depended on his answer, most pressingly, his life. He decided to try to discern Stalin's own feelings on the subject. (Finding out what Stalin thought and agreeing with him was a popular pastime in Russia between the years 1924 and 1953.)