The Moontian blinks at Gracie.
“I’m a girl, too,” Gracie tells her, reaching her hand out to touch the Moontian on the sleeve of her tan flight suit like she’s making sure that what she’s seeing with her own eyes is true.
“Yep,” I say. “And she’s our age in Earth years, but only one in Jupiter years. Weird, huh?”
“She’s not even a grown-up,” Gracie says.
“Nope,” I say.
“Can she speak English?” Dibs asks.
“She didn’t,” I say. “I mean, at first she was silent and then she started making noises, you know…beeps and clicks…like in the disk, but now it seems like she’s trying to say words. Kind of like Baby Kay does when she’s learning how to talk. Sounding words out, mimicking us, that kind of thing.”
“Like a parrot,” Dibs says.
I look at him. “Not at all like that.”
“Can you speak?” Gracie asks her.
We wait.
Silence.
“What’s with that nose?” Dibs blurts out. “It’s like just two holes and nothing else.” He tilts his head left and then right. “You think he can smell with that thing? I mean, you think it works?”
“How should I know?” I say. “And he’s a she, remember?”
“Well, doesn’t she talk to you?”
“Not about stupid stuff like nose holes.”
“What, then?” he asks. “What do you two talk about?”
“Important things,” I say.
“More important than the things we talk about?”
“Yeah, we talk about humans destroying the planets and the universe, other civilizations out in other galaxies, peace between worlds. Important things.”
“Well, what about…?” Dibs raises his eyebrows.
I turn to him. “What?”
“You know, does she…go to the bathroom?” He mouths the last word real big.
I click my tongue and roll my eyes. “You’re disgusting.”
“Why is that disgusting? Aren’t you even curious?”
“No,” I say.
“Curious about what?” Gracie asks.
“Nothing,” I say before Dibs has the chance to open his mouth.
“But you said ask her important things, didn’t you? Don’t you think that’s important?”
“Do you?” I ask.
He thinks about it, and then crosses one leg over the other. “Right now, I do.”
I roll my eyes again. “Momma brought her into the bathroom once, but she didn’t seem to need it. Plus, she never eats anything. They must get all their energy from the moon like we get ours from food.”
Dibs thinks about it. “I’d rather get mine from the moon if it meant I never had to eat Brussels sprouts again.”
“Or broccoli,” I agree.
We stand quietly, watching while Gracie tries to teach the Moontian a rhythmic clapping game.
“Then you clap twice…like this, see?” she says, clapping her hands.
“What about Superman?” Dibs asks me. “Did you ask if they know him?”
“That question is even stupider than the nose hole question,” I tell him. “You think I would ask her something so dumb when I could ask her anything in the whole entire world? The whole entire universe?”
He raises his eyebrows. “You asked, though, right?” He shows me his big beaver teeth.
I shrug. “Yeah, I asked.”
“And what’d she say?”
“They don’t know him.”
He smiles. “I knew you asked,” he says.
“Are those the comic books you write?” Gracie points at the stack of homemade comics in the open drawer of the nightstand between the two beds.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling the Venetian Red filling in the tops of my ears again.
“Any girls in them?”
I look at Dibs. “Ah…well, ah, I guess—”
“That’s a no.” Gracie looks at the Moontian again and shakes her head. “Probably should add some, huh?”
“Yes,” I say.
“That sure is a jim-dandy of a headband on her head,” Dibs says. “Think it’s a human mind-control-prevention skullcap?”
I smack him in the chest with the back of my hand. “That’s exactly what I asked her,” I say. “Actually, it’s for communication transmission and translation. That’s how she knows what I’m saying and how she’s learning our language. It also gives me information. She put it on me.”
Dibs blinks at me. “It’s a what?”
“It’s how she knows what we’re saying, and when she puts it on me, it answers questions that I didn’t even know were swimming around in my brain. It’s also how they operate the disk. There isn’t any ignition in that thing, or pedals, buttons, or rearview mirrors or anything. They put their hands on this screen and then think about flying and it flies. Their minds do all the work. And it’s also what’s going to get them home. She just has to get to her brother at the base. She’s not leaving here without him.”
“No phasers?”
“No phasers.”
“No mind-control devices?”
“Not any of those, either,” I inform him. “But there’s this one other thing she’s got. It’s like a magic wand and it glows green on the end of it. And it puts broken things back together again. Like new. I ripped up my Superhero Club Membership Card, and she just zapped it whole in a single blink.” I pull it out of my pocket to show him. “Can’t even see where the rips were.”
He examines it front and back. “Well, why didn’t she just point that thing at the disk and fix that?” he asks.
“I don’t know the answer to that one,” I say. “I guess she left some answers out.”
“You asked her about Superman but you left that one out? It’s a pretty important one, don’t you think?”
“You’re absolutely, positively sure they come in peace?” Gracie asks me.
“Yep, they came because of the atom bomb,” I say. “They saw that thing going off from space. Each one of them.”
She nods.
“The bombs reverberated throughout the entire galaxy. They thought we went and blew up our planet for good after all the mess we made down here and up there. They were surprised to see us even still alive at all.”
We don’t say anything else for a long while.
“What about her name? Did she tell you her name?” Gracie asks, giving the Moontian a green plastic bracelet from her cloth purse and slipping it over her wrist.
“I guess I forgot to ask that, too,” I say.
“What do you think she wants to be called?” Dibs wonders aloud.
I shrug. “Didn’t say. Should we give her a nickname, you know, like with Spuds…at least until we figure it out?”
Dibs rubs his chin between his thumb and forefinger, considering. “You mean like Zucchini Squash?” he suggests.
I turn to him. “What? No, you dope, I don’t mean another vegetable. I mean a nickname that fits her like Spuds fits Spuds. Know what I mean? Like Spuds is round and dimpled like a potato. Get it?”
We stare at the Moontian again.
“What about No Hair?” Dibs says.
“That’s just stupid.”
“Suction Cup?”
I roll my eyes. “No way.”
“Crash?”
I put my hands on my hips and give him a good glare. “That’s the worst of all of them. And why remind her of that? You’re just going to hurt her feelings.”
“You think she has feelings?”
“Of course she does.”
“How can you be so sure?”
We all stare at her again.
The Moontian pulls the headband off her head and hands it to Gracie.
Gracie hesit
ates, looking at me again.
“I did it,” I tell her. “It doesn’t hurt. It just feels like the energy we felt at the ship. She just wants to talk to you. It’s okay.”
Gracie carefully slips the headband over her dark brown braids and then closes her eyes.
“What’s she saying?” Dibs asks her.
Gracie is quiet for a long while as we watch her eyeballs underneath her lids moving quickly left and then right over and over.
“Looks like she’s sleeping,” Dibs says.
“It feels kind of like that,” I tell him. “And then it feels like you’ve just woken up from a dream. But a real clear one with bright colors, like when Dorothy opens the door to Munchkinland.”
We watch Gracie slowly open her eyes.
Dibs’s hand shoots up in the air. “I call seconds,” he demands.
“Wow!” Gracie says, searching through her bag and pulling out a red tablet and pencil. “Girls can be anything in Europa. Anything at all,” she gushes. “Her mother is a scientist on her planet and her aunt is the mayor of one of the towns. An actual mayor, of all things!”
“A woman mayor?” Dibs says. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“Oh, it’s right, all right.” Gracie beams.
“Well, did she tell you her name?” Dibs asks.
“The best translation to our language,” Gracie tells us, staring wide-eyed at the Moontian, “is Moon Shadow. And she does have feelings. Lots of them. She feels them all the way down to her space girl toes.”
We all stare at her.
Moon Shadow.
A being from another world.
Someone who has changed everything we thought was true.
“Hold on,” Gracie says, touching her fingers to the band still wrapped around her head. “I think she’s got something real important to tell us. Yes, Moon Shadow? You can tell us anything. Anything at all.”
We all lean in close and wait.
The tiny Moontian opens her mouth and then closes it again. Then she opens it and closes it again. When she opens it a third time, we hear a beep at first and then a click and then she’s trying to use her tongue to say something.
Her very first human word.
We all stare wide-eyed at her.
“K-k-k,” she starts.
“You can do it, Moon Shadow,” Gracie tells her.
And then she does it. She says her very first word.
A real important word, too.
“KA-POW!”
We all bust a gut laughing and realize for the very first time that this tiny being from a moon across our solar system has become something even more important than we could ever have dreamed of.
Our friend.
July 9, 1947—9:05 a.m.
“Is that Gracie?” I shield my eyes from the sun and gaze at the road out front of the house.
Dibs is helping me finish up chores the next morning when we see her turning Betsy Bobbin up our long dirt drive.
He shields his eyes, too. “What’s she got?” he asks, setting down a pail of chicken feed.
“I think it’s a newspaper.”
“What’s she hollering about?”
“They did it again!” she calls out to us, waving the newspaper high over her head.
“Did what?” I call back.
She pulls hard on the reins, bringing Betsy Bobbin to a halt in front of us.
“Here.” She tosses the paper down to me. “They took it back. All of it. They just went and took it all back.”
“Who?” I ask.
“The Army Air Force.”
“They took what back?” Dibs asks.
“The disk,” she says. “They said it wasn’t any disk at all. They just plain went and took it all back.”
“What’d they say it was?” Dibs wants to know.
“I’ll give you one guess,” she says.
“No, they didn’t,” he says.
“They sure did.” She nods.
“Not a stupid weather balloon,” I say, unrolling the paper.
“That’s exactly what they’re saying. Even after telling the whole world what it really was yesterday.”
“What are we, a bunch of idiots?” Dibs leans a chin on my shoulder to get a look, while Gracie slips off Betsy Bobbin and stands behind my other shoulder.
Together we read the front page.
July 9, 1947 Roswell Daily Record
GEN. RAMEY EMPTIES ROSWELL SAUCER
RAMEY SAYS EXCITEMENT IS NOT JUSTIFIED
GEN. RAMEY SAYS DISK IS WEATHER BALLOON
An examination by the army revealed last night that mysterious objects found on a lonely New Mexico ranch was a harmless high-altitude weather balloon—not a grounded flying disk….
“How…what…It’s unbelievable. How can they even say these things? They’re just flat-out lies. Stinkin’, lousy lies.” Dibs stomps around in the dirt, kicking up loose gravel with his bare feet.
“A weather balloon,” Gracie says. “Just like Mrs. Manuela said happened in the Battle of Los Angeles. Fourteen hundred rounds fired at it and all they can come up with is a weather balloon?”
“They took it back,” Dibs mutters again, shaking his head, kicking more gravel. “Like just because they say it’s true we have to believe it? Believe it like we don’t have our own eyes? Our own brains?”
“And that’s not even the worst of it,” Gracie goes on.
Dibs stops kicking and stares at her.
“They took Mac Brazel into custody this morning.”
“Into custody?” Dibs says. “What is that supposed to mean? He ain’t no criminal.”
“They arrested him for telling the truth?” I ask.
“Mrs. Manuela said Mac Brazel gave an interview to the Roswell radio station last night on tape about the whole thing and it was supposed to air on the radio today. But now that the Army Air Force has changed their mind about what they want people to know, they went in and threatened the radio station about playing that taped interview on the air. Said they’d shut them down if they played it. A matter of national security, they said. Now they’re escorting Mac Brazel around Roswell to give new and improved interviews at the radio and the newspaper both, to say the exact opposite of what’s true. But Mac Brazel won’t straight-out lie, so who knows what they’ll do to him now.”
“Can they do that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “They’re doing it.”
“What about your daddy?” Dibs asks her. “Isn’t he a general at the 509th Bomb Group? Isn’t he in charge there?”
She shrugs. “Kind of, but Washington, D.C., is really in charge. Daddy doesn’t normally talk about stuff that goes on at the base, and I’m in Corona this summer so I’m not spending time out there like I do sometimes.”
“The base?” I ask her. “You spend time on the Roswell Army Air Force base?”
“Sometimes I go with Daddy on weekends when he has work to do or when Momma is busy with the younger kids and wants me out of her hair. Except I’m not allowed everywhere,” Gracie explains. “There are some locked doors and even one wing that I’m never allowed to be in. Mostly, I read in Daddy’s office. But it’s quiet on the weekends and sometimes I explore, and once I made it to this one hallway and I got in some big trouble. Big trouble.”
“What’s in that hallway?” Dibs asks her.
She lifts her shoulders up again. “All I know is it’s need-to-know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if you don’t need to know it for your specific job in the military, you don’t get to know it. Need-to-know, get it?”
“So once Mac Brazel gives his new interviews to the radio and the newspaper, what then?” Dibs asks her. “Will they let him go?”
“I don’t know that, eithe
r,” she says. “If you don’t do what the government says, they can do whatever they want to you. Even imprison you for treason.”
Dibs swallows. “Treason?” he says. “What’s that?”
“When you commit crimes against your country,” she explains.
“Since when is telling the truth crimes against his country?”
“That’s the whole point,” she says. “If you don’t do what they say and go along with what they want, they can accuse you of that. Remember what I said about national security? If they want something to be a secret, you keep that secret, or else. So I guess Mac Brazel is doing what they say so they’ll leave him be. See that other article there?” She points to the paper.
July 9, 1947 Roswell Daily Record
HARASSED RANCHER WHO LOCATED “SAUCER” SORRY HE TOLD ABOUT IT
…Brazel said that he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these.
“I’m sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon,” he said. “But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.”
“But that’s not even the worst of it,” Gracie says again.
“Wait.” Dibs sighs hard. “You already said that. You got more bad news?”
She nods. “The worst. The Army Air Force is going door to door in Corona making sure no one is hiding any of the pieces. And making sure everyone knows to keep their mouths shut about it.”
My heart stops beating and fear washes over every single bit of me. “What do you mean door to door?” I ask her. “Every single house?”
“That’s what Mrs. Manuela said at the store this morning.”
“Holy cheese and jalapeños,” Dibs mutters, and starts pacing in the dirt.
“They know there were others out there,” she goes on. “More than just Mac Brazel.”
Dibs stops. “You mean like…us?”
“I don’t know about that,” she says. “But Mrs. Manuela said they’ve been to the Martins’ place, to the Beasleys’, and out on the Rivera ranch, too.” She counts on her fingers. “So far they haven’t collected a single thing, but they’re not going to stop until they find what they’re looking for.”
The Truth About Martians Page 16