Chapter Six: The Gift of Many Bullets

The gunfire ended after an eternal ten seconds. Toby looked up as the smoke dissipated, feeling a bit stunned. When the shooting began, he’d tackled Lara and covered her with his body. He’d somehow banged his head against the ground.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Lara said, rubbing her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Toby glanced at her as he rose to his feet, but didn’t respond. He watched and listened as the smoke and screams faded away. Then he remembered the alien.

It stood as before, with no sign of injury, still holding the object pointed at the president. Most of the crowd had fled or dropped to the ground. A few news people remained, broadcasting the events to the world.

Dubois was roaring at his security people as he roughly pushed them off of him and rose to his feet. His face was as white as his hair. The security people tried to form a circle around him but he slapped the nearest one in the face, then shoved another against his neighbor, causing them to fall to the ground, domino style.

“Get away from me!” he yelled. The security backed off, though they still hovered a few arm lengths away, out of presidential reach. Dubois approached the alien.

“Is this how you normally greet aliens?” Twenty-two asked, slowly rocking side to side, her eyestalks rigidly staring at Dubois.

Dubois brushed dust from his clothes, his jaw working, but nothing came out.

Toby stepped forward. “We’re sorry about this. That thing in your hand—”

“This is a sensor. Would you like to know how many of your bullets and energy beams hit me?” An eyestalk peered at the instrument. “Why did you try to kill me?”

“How did you survive?” Toby asked.

The other eyestalk peered at Toby. “I am wearing a shielded vest. I had planned to wear an unshielded red vest. If I had worn the red vest I would be dead.”

Dubois stepped forward, giving Toby a nasty look. Toby stepped back.

“Mr. Ambassador, why don’t we go to my office, where we can talk.” Dubois’s face had regained a bit of its color.

“Are you going to shoot me again?”

“No, Mr. Ambassador, we—”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘mister’? I am in my female stage. Would not ‘miss’ be the appropriate term?”

“Sorry, Ms. Ambassador—”

“Let us go to your office. There I will explain to you the basics of first contact. Bringing guns and shooting are considered poor manners.”

Toby realized that the press had crept closer, and all of this was being broadcast worldwide. Dubois looked about and must have realized it.

“We didn’t mean to shoot you, but you—”

“If you did not mean to shoot me, why did you surround my ship with weapons?” the alien asked. “Only an idiot surrounds himself with things he does not plan to use. Are you an idiot?”

Uh oh, Toby thought; Dubois wasn’t going to take that well. He’d spent much of his presidency acting on grudges, some from as far back as his childhood. Toby remembered the time Dubois had secretly gotten Congress to insert into a bill a funding cancellation for a specific school in France. It made no sense until an aide discovered the school’s principal had struck Dubois out to win a little league baseball championship when the two were both fourteen. Local newspapers ran a photo of the pitcher jumping in the air in celebration as Dubois slumped to the ground. Toby had good reason to stay with the Dubois Campaign—to protect Lara from the wrath of Dubois. Apparently nobody had warned the alien.

The president’s face flushed red with anger, and then returned to a professional smile, the red rapidly fading away. Toby recognized the switch to Dubois’s “attack mode.” Cool, calm, and scary as hell.

“Or perhaps it was part of a cultural exchange,” Twenty-two continued. “I appreciate the gift of these many bullets,” and she waved two of her arms at the bullets now lying on the ground about her after bouncing off her invisible shield. “Also the energy from your primitive laser weapons. Should I return this cultural exchange with my own weapons?”

Dubois stepped back and glanced toward the cameras. He’d lost the smile.

“Ms. Ambassador, I welcomed you to our planet for this historic event with respect and dignity,” the president began. “We made a mistake, and I do apologize for that. But now you are acting with malice and threatening us with your weapons. I will continue to treat you with respect and dignity, but I demand that you get off our planet or face the combined fury of our people.”

It was a brilliant response, Toby thought. Decisive and short, and completely wrong. It should swing a few million voters back our way. Of course, they’d lost many more millions from the ill-advised attack, and from the image of Dubois floundering about on the ground, buried under a pile of security people.

“Are those cameras broadcasting to your world?” Twenty-two asked, motioning with her eyestalks at the press. “I am guessing they are.” She shuffled toward them in a strange gait where the two legs on each side operated as one, giving the alien a strange four-legged biped-like walk.

“Hello humans,” she said. “I am Ambassador Twenty-two. I come from Grodan, the third planet from Tau Ceti. I am here to observe and learn about your political process. I have learned much today. I look forward to learning more. I will be around. Now I return to my ship.” She paused. “Is there a better way of explaining things without this constant use of ‘I’?” When there was no response, she shuffled back toward her ship, one eyestalk looking back, one forward. She stopped where the mustard marred the side of her ship. “Damn human,” she said as she wiped it clean with a cloth from her vest. Then she shuffled back into her ship. The doorway rose back into the ship, leaving no seam.

Incoming call from Dubois. “Accept,” Toby whispered to his TC, glancing back toward the president.

“Meet me in my office immediately,” Dubois said. “We’re going to war.”