Chapter Two: The Arrival

Tuesday, July 27, 2100

The spaceship landed shortly after 9:00 A.M. in front of the United Nations Building in East Manhattan, exactly four weeks before the start of the worldwide election for president.

The large black sphere, 20 feet in diameter, had plummeted out of the sky at a meteor’s speed, then slowed in seconds until it came to a stop, floating five feet above the ground. No Earth vehicle could match that performance. There was no visible means of levitation underneath the ship, just a smooth, black surface. In most places on Earth there would have been panic. However, this was New York City, Earth’s capital, where “alien” was just a matter of degree.

Crowds gathered, many broadcasting the images worldwide with their thought computers. A child threw a veggie dog against the black sphere, leaving dripping mustard on its side. Several other children dashed under the black sphere until stern parents pulled them back.

Within minutes, delegations of police arrived. They cordoned off the area around the black sphere to hold the crowds back, then sauntered about, not sure what to do about this strange ship that had fallen in their midst.

The chief of police stepped past the cordoning. There was no obvious door on the ship, whose shiny black surface was marred only by the dripping mustard. He rapped on the ship with his stick. “Anyone there?”

* * *

While the alien ship was landing, Toby and his daughter were in the Red Room in the United Nations Building—The Bubble—going over campaign strategies with the president and vice president.

On the wall to the left and right of the president’s huge walnut desk were portraits of past world presidents, brightly lit from a chandelier and the sunlight through the windows. Interactive holomaps floated near the front wall. Lettered in blue on the soft red carpeting were the letters “POTUSE”: President of the United States of Earth.

It hadn’t always been the Red Room. When Wallace had been elected the world’s first president in 2050, he’d painted the office green, to represent the environmental work needed to clean up after the nuclear wars of 2045. When Abrams succeeded him ten years later, he painted the room red, the color of the Conservative Party. Since that time the room had changed color and name whenever it changed parties. During the liberal Xu administration, it had been the Blue Room. Now it was the Red Room once again.

“We need to find a compromise,” Toby said as he rose to his feet. “If we take either side, we lose the votes and funding from the other side.” He fingered the fading purple scarf under his short beard. He’d lost weight this past year, and his green suit sagged loosely along the sides.

“You’re going soft,” said Lara. She walked over to the holomaps by the front wall, stopping in front of a shimmering map of North America. Colored dots indicated various voting regions, Conservative headquarters for each state, upcoming political events, and other data. “A compromise means you lose both sides,” she said as she tapped her finger over two almost overlapping orange dots on purple Utah. One was Salt Lake City; the other New Israel. “Forget the Israelis, we need the Mormon vote. Get them angry, and you lose the Midwest and Mexico.” She waved her hand over the indicated regions. “Side with the Mormons, and you win all this.”

“But we’ve always supported New Israel,” President Dubois mumbled. He was seated at his desk, his mouth full of natural peanuts he was stuffing in a handful at a time, ignoring the bowl of artificial no-cal peanuts also on his desk. He’d gained thirty pounds the past four years, and was on his sixth set of blue suits as he moved up in waist size. “If the media starts calling me a hypocrite again I’ll lose votes. They can do that all they want after the election.”

A fly buzzing in the window behind Dubois brought Toby’s attention away from the pungent peanut aroma. How had a fly made it past the best security system in the world? Toby watched it fly up and down against the window. Maybe it liked peanuts.

“We have to do something about the Salt Lake riots,” Lara said, “and a crackdown on the Israelis solves the problem.” As she looked side to side, her black pyramidal hair, reaching a point a foot over her head, stayed rigidly in place. The four corners looked sharp enough to use as a weapon. The new style was cultivated for the press and voters, but Toby hated the latest trend toward polyhedral hair.

Persson, the towering vice president, slouched in his chair, frowning in his baggy brown suit and black bolo tie. If he stood, his head would hit the chandelier, and his chin would be above everyone’s head. “Sir, don’t you think—”

“Plug the mouth hole, Rajan,” the president snapped, pronouncing it with an exaggerated “Ray-Jan.” He didn’t bother to glance at his vice president, whose frown grew deeper. “I don’t want to deal with the New Israel Lobby before the election. If you can keep them out of my face until then, I’m fine with whatever helps us best.”

“Corbin,” Toby said, pulling his attention away from the fly. “If you take sides in this, you will look like a hypocrite, and everyone will see that.” There’s a limit on how much we can hide you from the voters, he thought.

“Everyone?” Lara asked. “Aren’t you the one who preaches that all politics is local, that nobody notices what politicians do until they’re in their own back yard?”

“It’s all local,” Toby replied, “until they find out what you’ve been telling others.”

“They rarely pay attention and find out, do they?” Lara turned back to the holomap, and jabbed her finger in the middle, somewhere in Kansas, her finger going through it like a gigantic missile. “Dad, North America is seven percent Jewish and fifteen percent Mormon. It has 88 electoral votes, 62 from the U.S., and the momentum as the second continental election in the world, and the first major one. If we let Ajala take North America and its electoral votes, the next thing we know he’ll be moving in here and the place will be crawling with liberals. As campaign director, what do you really recommend?”

Crawling with liberals, Toby thought, watching the buzzing fly. He’d had his greatest successes running moderate conservative campaigns, which was why he was blackballed by the Liberal Party. Dubois had promised Toby that he’d lead as a moderate, but once in office, he’d gone back to his conservative roots. Toby had once considered himself a liberal, but he no longer was sure. Conservatives, liberals—there weren’t any other options in a world dominated by the Conservative and Liberal Parties.

“Well?” Lara asked, bringing Toby out of his reverie.

“Don’t forget about the New Israel Lobby and their funding,” Toby said. “We need NIL.” The fly’s buzzing was irritating; couldn’t housekeeping or security or someone take care of it? With all their guns and other weapons, wouldn’t they have a flyswatter packed away somewhere?

“Shouldn’t we at least—” Rajan began.

“Plug it,” Dubois said. “Toby, how much of our money have we gotten from NIL?”

Toby pulled his attention away from the distraction at the window. “About ten percent. But if we turn our backs on them, they’ll let us know very loudly. Besides, the Israelis aren’t the ones who started the rioting, it was—”

“How much do we expect to get from them before the North American election next month?” Dubois asked.

“We’ve received—” Toby began.

“—nearly all we’re going to get from them,” Dubois finished for him.

“Meaning,” Lara said, “we already have the NIL money and can still get the Mormon vote, if we play this right. If we emphasize low taxes and law and order, we’ll keep the conservative vote. They won’t even notice what’s happening in Utah, except the law and order part. As you always say, Dad, throw some spiced vegetables to energize the base.”

Toby shook his head. “It just isn’t—”

“I think we have to go with Lara’s plan,” Dubois said. “Just before the election, I’ll condemn the Israelis and side with the Mormons. The Israelis will have to give up the disputed areas.”

Toby knew he’d lost another argument. He was arguing with his heart instead of his head. He knew the saying: liberals have no head, conservatives no heart. Where did he fit in?

They’d been through a long primary campaign, but they’d easily won the Conservative nomination at the convention. Soon he’d have to make some tough “the end justifies the means” decisions in the upcoming general election. He remembered long ago having great difficulty with such decisions. Then he’d been introduced to the drug Eth, which took away moral constraints. It solved the problem, as long as he didn’t get caught taking the illegal drug. It wasn’t a magic bullet; you still had to choose to take the drug, knowing its effects, which was a moral dilemma in itself. This meeting would have been a lot easier for him if he’d taken some in advance. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—he’d quit the habit after the 2095 election. It had been his decision to take Eth back then, and the consequences were his alone.

He couldn’t argue with the hard political facts, since he was supposedly in charge of them. Politics, he thought. Once it had inspired him. “Poli” meant many, “tic” meant bloodsucker, so “politics” was just “many bloodsuckers.” He was one of them.

As the glorified Campaign Director, he had about as much influence on the issues as the buzzing fly on the wall.

And once again, he knew, Israel was doomed. The establishment of New Israel outside Salt Lake City fifty years before had led to nothing but conflict. They’d won many votes in the last election by promising to resolve the ongoing Israeli-Mormon conflict; now, just before the next election, they were going to do so. Israel had once been destroyed by nuclear bombs; now it would be destroyed again, this time by administrative fiat.

Damn fly! Maybe he couldn’t save New Israel, but the fly had to go. He looked about for something to swat it with, and grabbed a paper document from Dubois’s desk. It seemed archaic to use so much paper in this age of thought computers, like counting on one’s fingers, but Dubois was old-fashioned in that regard—and paper would always be a staple in any type of office, no matter how many predicted its demise. And they did make handy anti-fly weapons. Toby glanced at the title: North American Tree Repopulation Study: The Regreening of America. As if that had a chance. He’d make better use of it.

“Excuse me a moment,” he said, rolling the paper into a cylinder. Then he realized that Dubois, Lara, and Persson were looking off into space, their eyes vacant. The words “Breaking News!” appeared in the air in front of him, and he now heard the words in his mind, care of his thought computer.

“TC on,” he said under his breath, and the World News Network broadcast screen appeared before him. No one else could see or hear it, just as he couldn’t see or hear the broadcasts the others were watching. The thought computers, implanted in their heads, played directly into the optical and auditory portions of their brains.

The WNN showed pictures surrounding what was apparently an alien ship. A disembodied women’s head on the lower right gave all the information available—essentially nothing. A scientist came on and explained how nothing on Earth could come out of the sky at such a speed, and how the alien could be a threat. Then the woman’s head returned.

Toby stared at the black ship. Was this a prank, or could it actually be an alien, an actual first contact? His heart was racing. He realized he’d crushed the anti-fly weapon in his hand. He tossed it aside. Maybe the aliens could swat humanity like he could swat a fly. But a single ship that could probably fit in the Red Room didn’t seem like an armada out to destroy humanity. He took a deep breath. First contact. On our watch.

“TC off,” he whispered when the report degenerated to repeating itself, and found the president and Lara already in animated discussion. The fly now stood directly in front of Dubois on his desk, seeming to stare at Toby. Then it flew back to the window and continued its irritating buzzing.

Four aides came through the door at a run, all talking at once. They surrounded the president like bees around a beehive.

Dubois slammed his fist on his desk. “Shut up, all of you!” He pointed at each of the aides in turn. “You, you, you, and you, get out!” After a few seconds of blanching, the aides left, also at a near run.

“The last thing we need right now,” Dubois said, “are a bunch of self-important lowbodies who think they know everything but know nothing of the political implications of anything. Who knows what’s really going on with that ship, and how it’ll affect the election?”

Like a laser beam fixed on a target, Toby thought, Dubois had zeroed in on the political aspect. Toby knew he’d once been like that, but not in recent years. At least he didn’t think so.

“It could be an attack,” Lara said. “Call out the guard, and if anything from that thing so much as sticks out its tongue, blast it. Of course, it might be a hoax.”

“Why,” Toby asked, “would you even consider attacking when this supposedly alien ship has done nothing hostile?”

Lara gave her most ingratiating smile. “Strong and wrong beat meek and weak. You said that, remember?”

Persson still sat on the couch, looking down at the president, who paced back and forth. “Perhaps we should—”

“Plug it.” The president came to a stop. “If I go out there and play the ‘welcoming leader’ role, and it’s some prank or something, I’ll look like a fool.”

“This is no hoax,” Toby said. “There’s nothing like that in the USE air force, or any other regional air force.”

“How do you know?” Lara asked. “That’s what they said about black helicopters.”

“You think we have black spheres in the air force that can move like that thing did?”

Lara began to protest, but Dubois silenced her with a raised hand. “If these are real aliens, then I’m the one who’s going to welcome them to Earth and get the credit. If we play this right, I can ride this to victory.”

Persson began to say something, but changed his mind at a glance from the president.

“Sir,” Toby said, “this could be the biggest thing this century—”

“All seven months of it,” Lara interrupted. “Unless you’re one of those potato-heads from the university who say the century doesn’t start till next January.”

“—and I believe we need to put politics aside for now and just see how this goes.”

“Why would we do that?” Lara asked. “Heck, we can play this either way. Corbin can act all presidential, welcoming foreign dignitaries to Earth, or he can turn on the ‘get tough on aliens’ shtick, just like he did with the African émigrés last year. We win either way.”

“And if it’s a hoax?” Dubois asked.

“Then,” Lara said, “you get to play the ‘law and order’ role when you deal with those idiots. It’s win-win.”

The president nodded. “Rajan, call the Army Chief to set up security. Toby, Lara, I’m going to need a welcoming speech. This is going to be historic, and people will read my words for centuries. And this could win the election. Get cracking.”

On the way out, Toby alerted maintenance about the fly.