The Garubis were punctual. Friday morning, as Mark and his father had breakfast together, all of the world’s three million broadcasting channels carried news, bulleted in two hundred languages.
The starship had changed orbits. It now kept station above North America.
“I’d better report to base,” Dad said, standing up and taking his plate to the sink. Unspoken was the fact that his experimental team had the most advanced aircraft in the world, incorporating what few bits of alien technology the experts had managed to decipher in three frantic months. If something went wrong today … well, that didn’t bear much thinking.
“Stay cool, Dad,” Mark said, quashing a tight feeling inside.
“You too, son.” His father gave Mark’s shoulder a squeeze, harder than usual, then departed. Mark loaded the dishwasher, hoisted his backpack and locked the front door before hopping on his bike.
Students were converging for the last day of school before Desert Carnival, but there was none of the usual chatter about who was taking whom to the dance. By the bike racks, and then on the steps leading inside, few people spoke. Dozens of guys flexed bare forearms where pixel tattoos showed the latest news reports… that a disk had once again spun off the giant cylinder in space. Another lander was leaving a trail of hot, ionized flame as it circled Earth once on its way down.
In New York, fresh preparations were underway. Perhaps this time the visitors would choose to talk a bit, when they delivered Earth’s “compensation.” Nobody — not even the most optimistic — expected much of a party.
Settling into his first class of the day, Mark knew that Mr. Castro had scored a bulls-eye. The topic he assigned on Monday was atop everybody’s mind.
The Gift.
“What would I ask for?” Dave McCarty groused bitterly. “Why bother thinking about it? They don’t plan to ask us what we want, obviously. They’ll pick something they think we need, like grandma sending me hippie clothes every birthday.”
Paulina Isfahani raised her hand.
“I’m hoping they’ll offer us a better, faster way to grow meat without killing animals! We could feed the world with a lot less waste and pain.” It was an old topic and getting solved already by human tech, but not fast enough for “Gaia Carers” like Paulina. She met the groans of her classmates with defiance. “I’m not surprised they weren’t polite to us. We’re murderers!”
Mr. Castro quashed further moans, raising both hands. “That’s a legitimate hypothesis, Paulina. Any other ideas?”
Jennifer Ledgerwood spoke up, glaring at her ex-boyfriend across the aisle. “How about giving everybody a really good lie detector!”
“Hm, yes,” the teacher mused. “That would certainly change politics and commerce … as well as dating. We could discuss that one for a year. Anyone else?”
A rapid series of suggestions burst forth as each student, in turn, seemed to have a special wish.
“Flying cars!”
“Cures for disease and getting old.”
“A way to learn stuff without going to school!”
“Something about God?”
“Clean energy.”
“I’m hoping for some new cuisine!” announced Patrick Sauvel. “I am so sick of pizza and burgers and tacos and mu shu lo mein. Something really alien and yummy would be nice.”
After the laughter died down, Lance Ford had a different suggestion.
“How about a way to, you know, freeze people and thaw them later safely? So they could be fixed when a cure is found for their sickness? Or even if you’re not sick. You could use it to visit other planets. Or the future, where things’ll be better. I bet the Garubis have that, or they couldn’t go to the stars.”
Some classmates nodded at this logic, but Mark knew the last part was wrong. These aliens didn’t need suspended animation. They had faster-than-light transport — much faster — in order to have come for Na-bistaka just ten days after being called.
“Do you think people would do that?” Mr. Castro asked, clearly intrigued. “Would healthy folks have themselves frozen in order to sleep out the next century, hoping things will get better? Yes, Arlene?”
The immigrant girl lowered her hand.
“That could be the only way to make things better.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that right now the world’s population is so high … it takes all of our resources just to feed people and stay even. I heard one expert predict that we’ll have a ‘population correction’ soon. He seemed so calm, talking about how that would bring things back into balance, though a ‘correction’ like that means two or three billion people dying!”
Arlene turned to look back at the rest of the class.
“Believe me, those billions won’t go willingly or peacefully! They will take the rest of us down with them.”
Students stared. Nobody had never seen Arlene get so intense.
“Whereas, if we had hibernation —” Mr. Castro prompted, urging her to complete the thought.
“Well … if such a technique proved safe and easy and cheap enough … those same billions of people might choose to get out of the way, calmly sleeping and waiting it out. Meanwhile, others could use the new sup … srup …”
“Surplus?”
“Yes, surplus. Those who stay awake would have to promise to use the surplus this created, to solve problems! Invest in new cities and technologies. Clean up the environment. Make a paradise for the sleepers to wake into!”
Mark couldn’t help blinking in wonder. Arlene’s growing confidence had burst through some inner threshold. From a shy immigrant kid speaking broken English, she was turning into a strong person with formidable views … if somewhat unnerving ones.
Mr. Castro mused. “I think I once read a story about that very scenario.”
More groans. Ever since the world turned upside down that fateful Thursday, he kept recalling ‘classic’ science fiction tales about First Contact. Their variety appeared limitless, in film or book or magazine, and Mr. Castro seemed to know them all.
“I think it was written by Offutt and Lyon. Those two also wrote a scenario even more relevant to our present situation. Let me see if I can remember — I think it was about aliens who come to Earth in need of something. I don’t know — maybe some chemical from daisies — it doesn’t really matter.
“In this story, they offer to buy the thing they want, but Earth’s appointed negotiator acts coy. So they up their offer, from a new power source all the way to a couple of used starships! World leaders want to leap at this, but the negotiator figures the visitors are eager, maybe even desperate. They really need this thing we have. He also figures that they are still offering the equivalent of glass beads.
“So he finally decides what to demand from them.”
The teacher paused and Mark found himself waiting, tensely.
“Yeah?” Froggi Hayashi finally urged, voice edgy with impatience.
Mr. Castro smiled.
“The negotiator insists that the visitors say please.”
Froggi blinked a couple of times, as confused as his classmates.
“That’s … dumb.”
“Is it?” Mr. Castro shrugged. “In the story, that one demand sends the aliens into a tizzy. They offer a dozen new starships. ‘Anything but that,’ they cry. ‘Don’t make us say please!’”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“Oh, but it does,” Helene Shockley’s voice murmured behind Mark. He turned to see her hand raised, jingling copper bracelets. “I think I see what the author was getting at.”
Mark saw it, too. But he had vowed to stay out of these sci fi discussions. Talk about aliens only churned his stomach. He wished the class would go back to ancient European History.
“You only say please when you talk to equals,” Helene explained. “Or those close to being equal. If someone asks you ‘please’ for something they need, it means you get to do the same.”
Then her voice dropped a little. “At least … that’s what I think the author might have meant.”
Mr. Castro nodded. “That seems reasonable. Can anyone see parallels between this story and what’s happening today? Mr. Bamford?”
Mark knew he would not escape by keeping silent. Still, he sighed.
“The Garubis think we’re trash. That’s all.”
“But that’s not all, Mark,” Helene protested. “If we had acted like trash, they’d have felt just fine about snubbing us, or maybe doing something worse. But we surprised them.”
“Maybe because our movies always show people behaving so badly,” Trevor suggested. “All the TV and stuff that they watched from space … it made them expect that we’d act a lot more stupid. A lot worse.”
Helene nodded. “Maybe. Anyway, now, according to some kind of Galactic code — maybe a law or tradition — they have to treat us better than they really want to. That means something.”
“Yeah,” Mark muttered, with unexpected vehemence. “It means now they hate us. They’ll hand over some booby prize and then think hard about ways to get even with us for embarrassing them. That’s what lots of humans would do, admit it!”
She met his gaze. “Well … then we just have to hope they aren’t like lots of humans.”
Again, Mark wondered if Helene was putting some kind of meaning into her words — something personal. It might be solved if he had the courage to talk to her. On the other hand, she seemed happy with her Student Body President boyfriend — they were Prom Couple — so what was there to talk about?
Maybe next year, when Scott Tepper is in college …. Is she already lining up his replacement for our senior year? Mark chewed on the thought, which tasted like a weird combination of hope, excitement and wounded pride.
Before he could reply, a low murmur intruded, growing louder outside the classroom. A mutter of human voices. It grew louder. Dave McCarty flipped open his web-unit. He, too, started babbling.
“The lander! They say it’s not aimed for New York.”
Normally, it was an infraction to open a media device in class. But not today. Mr. Castro stepped forward. “Where do they say —”
“When it passed Hawaii the trajectory seemed bound for Southern California. Mojave Desert.”
Which makes it easy to guess what the precise target is, Mark realized. The Contact Center. Those white domes at the end of a runway, where Na-bistaka accepted our hospitality and every comfort we could provide.
Dad will get a front row seat. Maybe he’ll be first to see this “Gift” when they roll it out. Unless he’s scrambled and airborne when it comes.
By this time the TV – an entire, pixelated wall, was on, showing one network’s quick estimate of the glide path. Sure enough, it terminated just north of Joshua Tree National Monument — in the vicinity of Twenty-Nine Palms, California.
Doubtless, every helicopter in Los Angeles would be on its way here in moments, carrying frantic journalists back to their old stake-out.
When the period bell rang, some students wandered out and a few others drifted in, as if expecting the next class to begin as usual. It didn’t, of course. Any semblance of a normal schedule was completely forgotten as teachers and students alike clustered around the nearest media source. That is, until a deep-throated thunder rattled the windows and rocked the sky, much lower and more ominous than the familiar sonic booms of US Marine Corps jets.
Suddenly, every artificial medium was abandoned. Students, teachers and staff poured outdoors, shading their eyes against the sky blue glare as sharp sunlight reflected off a disklike object, now creeping slowly from the west amid a rising growl.
Despite his cynicism, Mark found it astonishing to see a Garubis vessel up close. It made a vision far more vast and palpable than he had expected from televised images. In fact, for a minute or two he actually felt … well … privileged. The sheer beauty of the glistening craft — still emitting a glow from its fiery path through the atmosphere — went beyond any issue he might have with the people flying it.
Alex felt the same way.
“Something to tell the grandchildren, eh?” she said, nudging Mark as she joined him on the front steps.
“Uh huh.” And yet, squinting, Mark found himself starting to worry. Something seemed wrong about the ship’s slow trajectory across the sky. Something unexpected.
They were joined by Barry Tang who asked Alex. “Isn’t your mother at the Contact Center?”
“Yeah. She was disappointed not to be part of the Eastern Team, but now she’ll be right where the action is! Mark’s father, too. We’ll get first-hand stories.”
“Maybe,” Mark commented amid a growing concern, as he watched the lander’s puzzling approach pattern. Barry saved him from having to say it aloud.
“Is it just me?” the younger boy mused. “Or does it look like that ship is —”
Slowing down a bit too much, Mark thought as Barry fell silent. And it’s not on a direct course for the air base.
In fact, the huge flying craft did not waver a bit, left or right, as it came straight at them. From this shortened distance, that meant the lander couldn’t be heading for the Contact Center, five miles to the north.
It’s … coming here.
Seconds later that fact grew obvious to everyone, as a door opened in the side of the great disk, vomiting a cloud of cylindrical drones that came swooping toward the town. This time, everyone knew about the Garubis style of landing. But it was one thing to watch on TV and quite another for the flurry of hollow tubes to hurtle toward you, like a swarm of huge, angry bees.
People screamed. Quite a few started to run, but the whirling cyclone of flying things now surrounded a few city blocks. It took more courage to approach the perimeter than to retreat inside the school.
Even from a height of a thousand feet, exhaust blasting down from the hovering lander felt uncomfortably hot. Only a hardy minority of students and staff remained outside to watch three spindly-but-massive legs rapidly take shape, self-assembling and climbing swiftly into the sky. One pillar slanted upward from just beyond the Food King’s far parking lot. A second crushed a hapless semi-trailer to bits, next to the Shell station. The third spire set carnival dogs yelping madly as it grew upward from the athletic field.
“I guess —” Barry stammered. “I g-guess they’re gonna give the … the Gift to —”
“— to us.” Alex finished the thought for him. “Damn. It better be something cool.”
Speaking of cool, Mark admired how Alex was keeping hers. Then he caught her glancing up at him and realized. She thinks the same thing about me.
A completely different sound made him swivel as — with a theatrical vroom — a white van tore along Rimpau Avenue, plunging through the swirl of alien drones, miraculously colliding with none of them. Barreling along the street, it pulled up, amid squealing brakes, before the high school. At first, Mark thought it might be science types from Cirocco Labs, because the vehicle bore an array of dishes and antennas on its roof. But no. Out piled the reporter from Channel Six — Headwitness News – and her faithful tech-cameraman.
Up and down Rimpau, he glimpsed similar enthusiasts, attempting to brave that cyclone of drone cylinders. Some students tried to flee the looming “gift” delivery, while other daring folks from town tried just as hard to get in. Six local bikers weaved confidently inward, seeking the eye of the storm.
But for most there was no time to try, or even decide. Barely more than a minute after it began, the tripod was finished self-assembling and the lander was settling quickly into place, at least two hundred meters overhead. The blast of warm air tapered off and then ceased …
… but not a low hum that seemed to vibrate his very innards.
Now that the razor cloud of intimidating cylinder-drones was gone, more people moved. A few ran for the perimeter — Mark noticed Tom Spencer, not hanging around to see what his reward might be for rescuing a stranded creature from the desert sands. Others hurried forward, scooting in from the town, driven more by excitement than fear.
Go or stay? he asked himself, as the vibration seemed to intensify, plucking his bones like strings. Mark knew, somehow, that Alex and Barry would follow, whatever he chose to do.
Decide now.