by Jean Rabe
“We killed a god on worldwide television just for ratings. A girl lets her brain overload just once trying to handle a little . . . what would you call it—”
“Deity-cide?”
“Good word.” Lora frowned at the memory, but only for an instant. Personnel had been right, she knew. Ratings-grabbing television did not get produced by the faint-of-heart. And besides, as the back of her mind where her own self-interest resided reminded her, the god-thing they had expelled from the earthly plane had come to murder and feast, so what was her problem anyway?
“I used to want to be a writer. Then I decided I’d rather have money, power, fame, and happiness.” Smiling, Richards congratulated himself once more for the smartest career move since Jimmy the Hat Belgaso decided ratting out the mob was preferable to the electric chair. Then, realizing he had good news right in front of him to exploit, he waved his assistant toward a chair, asking: “Anyway, you were saying?”
“Binghamton wants something different because the sponsors want something different. Fine—I’ve got it.” Lora paused just long enough to whet Richards’ curiosity without making him either cranky or uninterested, then said: “Alien abduction.”
“Details—give.”
“Biglet, Kansas,” she answered. “Steady reports of UFO sightings since the forties. So many the place is ignored now. But recently the reports have been getting more frequent, more detailed, and stranger.”
“How strange?”
“Yesterday a man disappeared. His friend said he was taken aboard a flying sphere. Transported by colored lights, like Star Wars—”
“Trek. ”
“What?”
“Star Trek had the transporters, not Star Wars.”
“Is that important?”
“To more people than you could possibly imagine.” Shaking his head sadly, the anchorman swung their conversation back to its original track, asking: “Any proof this ‘abductee’ isn’t sleeping one off in a ditch somewhere—or in a shallow grave?”
“None whatsoever,” answered Lora. “Which is why no one else is treating the story seriously. But Marv . . . I’ve got a feeling about this one . . .”
And that was all Marvin Richards had needed to hear. Lora Dean might not have been the most professional of executive assistants, but that was what made her valuable to the producer. She still possessed enough of the innocence that had made him hire her that he had no choice but to respond with: “And where exactly is Biglet, Kansas?”
Tomorrow
If the members of the Challenge crew had expected anything in the way of luxury accommodations, the merest glance at the available rooms at the Biglet Drive-In Motel and Laundromat soon reminded them of what life was like outside Los Angeles. It was not that the beds sagged, or that the toilets were dirty, or any other kind of summer comedy movie horror. No, the rooms were simply perfunctory. As the motel’s owner/manager Mrs. Catherine Drembable explained: “Oh, you know, we don’t get much in the way of visitors who need anything more than a bed for the night. Always on their way somewhere else. The Corn Palace, mostly. But there’s those who—”
“Who need,” interrupted a barely sober Marvin Richards, “to use the facilities, and then who need to find . . . ah, Lora . . .”
As the producer walked off at an angle in search of a bathroom, his assistant stepped in to handle the grunt work—making certain they secured enough rooms, gathering and distributing the keys, getting directions to the various spots they needed to find, listening to the motel owner, feigning enthusiasm, et cetera. By the time Richards returned, looking reasonably human, his indefatigable assistant had taken care of everything, settled most of their crew in their rooms, and was waiting for him with one of their gophers and cameramen in the minivan they had rented for the week.
“Ready to roll?” asked Sandy Bilstein, the Berkeley film major parked behind the wheel who dreamed of taking Richards’ job.
“How about I sit and you take care of the rolling?” answered Richards. Curling into the darkest corner he could find within their vehicle, he told Lora, “Get as much done as you can that doesn’t involve me. Wake me when you need me.”
“What if we don’t need you until we go back to L.A.?”
“Then you’ll get that raise you keep telling me you deserve.”
The executive assistant told Sandy where to go first. An hour and three quarters later she was gently nudging her boss back to a state of at least semi-consciousness.
“I needs to be speakin’ with him—now.”
“Just a moment, please, sheriff. Mr. Richards has had a very taxing week.” Opening one eye the barest of slits, the anchorman whispered: “Sheriff?” When Lora merely nodded discreetly, he asked: “Which routine?”
“Just The Man,” she whispered back. Giving her the barest of nods in return to let her know he understood.
Richards sat up, sputtering slightly, shouting: “What, where, when? Oh, Lora . . . we’re there? We’re here? Where’s the sheriff? I told you, we can’t do anything without—” Then, pretending to have just noticed her hand pointing to a position just outside their vehicle, the producer blinked his eyes for effect, then exited the minivan, his hand extended toward the local lawman as he said, “Thank you for coming, officer. I know this must be a major inconvenience for you, and I promise I won’t take a moment more of your time than is necessary.”
Shaking the sheriff’s hand vigorously, Richards called over his shoulder:“Mickey, get a camera on the sheriff, you slug. We’re burning daylight. This man has crimes to solve.”
Releasing his grip, the producer then turned on the officer, brushing imaginary dust from the man’s shoulders, straightening his tie, framing his face with a rectangle made out of his thumbs and two of his fingers as if the action actually meant something, chattering at him.“Sheriff, Sheriff Kendall, isn’t it? My god, you look good in this light, don’t you—Kendall, that’s a powerful name, isn’t it? But, ah, sorry for getting distracted, so . . . tell us now, what’s your take on this whole UFO situation?”
“Ahhh, yes sir, you see,” began the lawman, clearly torn between being comfortable and uncomfortable with the way events were suddenly turning on him, “I came out here to tell you people . . . that we, er, I mean, the city council . . .”
“What are you trying to say, sir?” asked Lora, knowing all too well where the sheriff’s faltering delivery was attempting to lead.
Recognizing the road signs himself, Richards added: “Wait a second, sheriff . . . Lora, didn’t you arrange for the sheriff to meet us here? Do you mean to tell me I put this man on camera without his consent?”
“Ahhh, there’s no real harm done—”
“My stars, woman,” shouted the anchorman, seemingly ready to hyperventilate, “we’re bordering on the unethical here!” Then, spinning around, he took the sheriff’s hand and shoulder, adding to the lawman’s already considerable discomfort.
“You’ll forgive me, sheriff, but she’s new, I had no idea, I’m so terribly sorry, it’s just . . .” Richards took a step back, straining to make the old dodge he was about to deliver sound authentic and fresh: “Well, you’re so . . . so . . . photogenic—”
“I would’ve said ‘engaging,’ ” offered the cameraman, holding in the urge to chuckle as the nondescript, slightly balding, more than a little fleshy sheriff began to fall under the spell of Richards’ packaged charisma. “But I have to admit, he does sure fill the lens naturally.”
It only took a few more minutes for the Challenge cast and crew to dazzle the sheriff to the point where he forgot that he was there to deliver the city council’s warning that the Hollywood types would be carefully watched and not allowed to pull any of their typical shenanigans in Biglet. Indeed, eleven minutes after he had been roused from his nap, the show’s producer had all his facts confirmed.
One: The sheriff had a Lloyd George in custody.
Two: George had reported his friend Harlin Edgars missing, claiming Edgars had been
abducted by aliens.
Three: Edgars had been taken in the middle of the night from one of Tom Bradley’s alfalfa fields.
Four: The same spot that had a seventy-five year history of such sightings.
It was enough to make Richards dance for joy. Swinging into high gear, his hangover as completely and utterly forgotten as any of the flops he had ever produced or promises he had ever made, the anchorman turned his undeniable charm up to 11, and began pulling the entirety of Biglet, Kansas, under his spell. With the sheriff posing for close-ups in only a matter of minutes, he reminded Kendall that if the city council had their way there would be no further filming in his town. That led to a trip to the mayor’s office, which led to several other municipal doors, but in the end things turned out as they almost always did for Richards. Armed with well wishes from all the local dedicated politicians, the producer and his crew were soon exactly where he wanted them to be.
In the Town of Biglet Municipal Police Department, preparing to interview one Lloyd George.
“Don’t you think I should get cleaned up a bit or sumthin’?”
Richards studied the prisoner’s face and general appearance for a moment as if considering the suggestion, then answered, “No, I don’t think so, Lloyd. We want to grab the audience with your plight. Trying to save a friend, unjustly imprisoned, suspected of murder while only hoping to save a life—if you’re all clean and pressed you won’t come off as genuine enough.”
George nodded sagely, letting the producer know that even in the middle of the corn belt people understood the benefits of staging a scene. Pursing his lips, Richards thought, Goddamned reality television, they’re taking the mystery out of everything. Then, grinning to himself as he actually realized the irony of his passing notion, he turned to George and said, “So, tell us in your own words, Mr. George, what happened to you on the night of the sixteenth. Or, more precisely, what was it that happened to your friend, Harlin Edgars?”
And for the next seventeen minutes and thirty-eight seconds, Edgars did just that. Mentally editing as the story was haltingly told, Richards had the entire thing clearly laid out in a brisk two point eleven’s worth of dramatic soundbites when Edgars said the one thing that no one had expected.
“So, you fellahs gonna be out there tonight when they bring him back?”
As all eyes present blinked, then stared, it was Kendall who asked “Lloyd, just for the record, when ‘who’ brings ‘who’ back tonight?”
“The aliens, tonight, you know—when they bring Harlin back.”
“No one doubts you here, sir,” said Lora, knowing a female voice modulating the proper amount of concern and awe would be the one to pry free the most reliable information, “but we don’t understand. Why do you believe the aliens will return your friend? And why tonight?”
“That’s why we went out to Bradley’s when we did. We’d been studying up on the patterns. Them UFO boys been buzzing the stretch between the river and Bradley’s farm since the mid-40s. Everybody ’round here knows that.”
“It’s true,” said Kendall. “I don’t mean there’s any proof, but that’s how long folks been claimin’ to see lights and spheres and all manner of oddities out that way.”
“Thank you, sheriff,” said Richards, cutting the lawman off without hurting his feelings. “Well, OK—there’s some backup for you, Lloyd. But ...”
“Oh no, I understand. You see, there’s this pattern to when they’ll a’come in. The reason no one ain’t never noticed it before is it don’t line up with our calendar or anything. You have to lay out all the sightings on a track ... now what was it?” Everyone present unconsciously held their breath.
“Huuummmmm, I admit I can’t remember exactly, but it’s ’round 11, 1,200 days, and then you see the repeatin’ comin’ at ya. And if you look at all the times they’re supposed to have taken someone away ... it’s always been three days later when they dropped ’em back again.”
Richards stared at George for a moment longer, and then switched his gaze to Lora. As his cameraman peeked over his viewfinder at the producer, Richards had to take a moment to contain himself, before the visions of unprecedented ratings, wealth, fame, and the opportunity to have Carl Binghamton demoted to janitor sent him off into a giggling frenzy. Composed, he turned to Kendall, and in the calmest voice he could muster, asked, “So, sheriff ... do you think we could manage to post bail for Mr. George here? I was thinking we might all want to stage a little late night picnic.”
No fool, Kendall was already reaching for the keys to George’s cell.
The Challenge crew spent the rest of the day performing a variety of tasks. Tim Bradley’s consent had to be acquired for them to film on his property. Interviews had to be set up with members of Edgar’s family, as well as George’s, their friends, employers, et cetera. Researchers were put to work not only confirming George’s schedule of extraterrestrial visits to Biglet, but seeing if they could match such a cycle to any other astronomical timetable as well.
Finally, after an early dinner, Richards and his people as well as the sheriff and Lloyd George headed out to the Bradley alfalfa fields to get themselves in position. The team had brought three cameras, and all were positioned in a widely staggered triangle around the site of Edgar’s supposed abduction. The team’s main cameraman had, of course, been placed in the prime shooting spot, while Richards and his executive assistant had taken up the lesser vantage. The producer had kept George at his side while Kendall had been stationed with Lora where he could be made to feel he was acting as a protector, and out of Richards’ way.
For the first several hours of their wait spirits remained reasonable high. After all, George had stated Edgars was taken after midnight, so it seemed reasonable to all that he most likely might not be returned until roughly the same time. But, as the hour approached two in the morning, the amount of available patience began to evaporate. Kendall, in particular, began to feel both used and foolish.
After his third grousing session, Lora called her boss, telling him, “I think our friend the sheriff is beginning to doubt the cause of journalistic freedom here.”
“I hate to sound a traitor,” admitted Richards, “but he’s not the only one around here. See if you can get him to believe in our cause until three. At that point ...”
And then, the anchorman went silent as suddenly the late night quiet of Tim Bradley’s fields was broken by a muted humming, a low throbbing which immediately captured all attention. As those manning the trio of cameras around the area sprang into action, their ability to remain focused on their task was rewarded as a monstrously large, dark sphere dropped into position above them. Only seconds after its appearance, a sizable rectangle in the ship’s underside slid open. Then a small surge of pink and yellow lights flashed in the middle of the summer alfalfa, replaced after a heartbeat by the returned form of Harlin Edgars.
“Good Lord,” shouted Kendall, his fingers attempting futilely to pull his sidearm from its holster, “it’s true. It’s the goddamned Martians!”
All eyes stared at the sphere; all cameras continued to collect footage. After only a few additional seconds, though, Richards had Bilstein shift the focus of their unit from the ship above to Edgars below, and that was when things took a decidedly interesting turn as far as the producer was concerned. He had expected to find George’s friend hurrying through the alfalfa, desperate to be anywhere but where he was.
Such, however, was not the case.
As Richards looked on, he could see the portly Edgars waving, trying to induce one and all to come forward to his location. Thumbing the audio on his headset, the anchorman put himself in touch with Lora, asking, “You seeing what I’m seeing?”
After only a moment’s pause, she responded, “Looks like he’s waving us in.”
“Indeed it does.” Richards ruminated for a long moment, then told his assistant, “Tell Kendall I’m going to approach the ship. Tell him to maintain position. Say I want him to cover me. Just kee
p him there, and get on the horn and tell everyone else to maintain as well.” His eyes glinting with a mischievous hope, the producer said, “I’ve got the wireless. Wish me luck, baby.”
“You be careful, you nutjob,” responded Lora. “This could be dangerous.”
Drawing closer to the ominously humming spacecraft, Richards admitted, “Of course it could. If this thing didn’t reek of Emmy potential, trust me, I’d send you in a heartbeat.”
Lora smiled, reasonably certain her boss was merely trying to bolster her courage. Straining to see through the darkness, she kept her eyes on Richards as he moved closer to Edgars’ position. What could be keeping the abductee there? Why didn’t he run? Why was he calling others forward?
Then there was a flashing surge of pink and yellow lights, and both the men beneath the floating sphere disappeared.
Richards blinked, and then blinked again. As the producer and anchorman for Challenge of the Unknown, he had seen quite a lot of the strange and unusual in his time. Werewolves, vampires—everything from ravenous god-things to cockroach fairies. But those had been different, so archaically, oddly different he had little trouble accepting them. After all, as he lectured all newcomers to his staff, once you’ve seen your first zombie doing its dead man’s shuffle, everything else is pretty easy to digest.
But this, he told himself, now this was really different.
He was standing inside of a UFO. A spaceship, a starship! A vehicle capable of traveling outside the solar system, to other galaxies. Possibly other dimensions.
“My God in heaven,” he murmured unconsciously.
“Yeah, it’s sure six ways to nifty, ain’t it?” Turning, Richards found the temporarily forgotten abductee at his side. Shaking his head slightly, the producer extended his hand.
“Mr. Edgars?”
“Kinda, sorta. Come this way, Mr. Richards.”
“You know me?”