by John Ringo
“I wasn’t making fun of them,” the reporter said with a tone of honesty.
“I know, but that redneck crack is getting under my boys’ skin,” the captain replied, sternly. “The day one of you reporters is willing to charge the gates of hell with nothing but some World War Two weaponry you can crack wise. Until then, treat them with the respect they deserve. They and the national guardsmen are going to stay here until, at least, the rest of the battalion arrives. I’ve been told that the short-term plan is to get the whole brigade down here, arrayed in layered defense. What they’ll do after that I don’t know. But I think that even the locals will admit that a battalion of mechanized infantry is probably enough.”
“I notice that you’ve pulled further back from the gate,” the reporter said, changing the subject hastily. “Is that wise?”
“Our Abrams and Bradleys are longer-range weapons,” the captain explained carefully. “We’re digging revetments for them and as soon as the engineers and civilian contractors are done with them they’ll start on bunkers for the infantry that are forward of that line. But I don’t want my command caught in another of those explosions; if the enemy had come through right after its rhino-tank exploded they’d have rolled over the defenders. Infantry positions are back two hundred yards and the Brads and Abrams are at two-fifty. That should give enough stand-off for secondaries. And, trust me, we can fill the probable avenue of approach with plenty of firepower even if we’re that far back.”
“Well, Captain, I’m sure everyone’s glad you’re on the job,” the reporter said. “Back to you, Peter.”
“That’s good news from Eustis,” the anchorman said. “Now turning to other news, the young lady who miraculously survived the explosion in Orlando has been reunited with her surviving family,” the camera turned to what was clearly previously shot footage of Mimi, Tuffy tucked under her chin, hugging a heavy-set woman in her thirties. “Mimi Jones’ closest surviving relative is Vera Wilson, who now has the responsibility of raising not only her niece but the strange alien playmate that adopted her. Our reporter, Shana Kim, talked with Mrs. Wilson earlier today.”
The scene changed to what was clearly heavily edited footage as the heavyset woman, now wearing too much make-up of the wrong shade for television, was sitting in on a plaid sofa and talking.
“Herman and I are glad to take Mimi in,” the woman said, dabbing at her eyes. “I miss my Loretta, that’s my sister, of course, but by the grace of God Mimi survived. Herman and I don’t have any children of our own, not for want of trying and we both love Mimi very much and are glad to have her. She misses Loretta too, but she’s taking it very well. She hasn’t cried at all. I mean, she knows her momma is gone but we’ll all be together in Heaven someday and that is a blessed relief to her.”
“What about the alien?” the reporter asked. The camera gave a brief shot of the blonde woman in her twenties, looking serious and nodding her head. “Aren’t you worried about it?”
“Tuffy?” the woman answered. “Well, he’s pretty scary at first. I mean he looks like a big old terancheler. But he ain’t done nothing wrong. I had to scold Mimi one time, nothing much just that she hadn’t cleared her dishes, and I was sort of afraid to. But Mimi just nodded and did as she was bid and then told me that Tuffy said it was okay, I was right. That was pretty strange, I’ll admit, but, like I said, he ain’t done nothing wrong. I know they say he hurt that deputy, but I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding or something. I’m not afraid of Tuffy; he’s sort of cute. Truth to tell, if he’s that good a watch dog I’m glad to have him around what with all the child snatching and all. Couple of my neighbors asked if Mimi knew where they could get one for their own kids. Course she didn’t. She doesn’t remember where he come from.”
“There’s going to be a lot of interest in Mimi, you know,” the reporter said. “How are you going to handle that?”
“Well, we’re going to raise her as well as we can, as a God fearing young woman,” Mrs. Wilson answered. “As to the reporters and such, I figure with all that’s going on, Mimi and Tuffy won’t be so interesting before long.”
“And rarely have I heard the term ‘nine day wonder’ so well described,” the anchor said, smiling. “A charity fund for the support of Mimi Jones has been established. Donations can be made to: The Mimi Jones Foundation, PO Box 4687, Orlando, Florida, 32798-4687. And in other news…”
“In other news that’s going to be one very rich little alien,” a voice said from the door.
Weaver looked up and grinned at Command Master Chief Miller, who was wearing a hospital gown tied in the back.
“You know your ass is hanging out in the breeze, right?” Weaver said, turning down the TV.
“Yep,” the chief said, walking in the room.
“And you’ve got an IV insert stuck in your arm?”
“Yep,” Miller replied, taking a chair. “And I told them they had thirty minutes to take it out or I was going to do it myself and bleed all over their nice, shiny floor. How you doing, Doc?”
“Tired, sore, hell of a headache.”
“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” the chief intoned. “You ready to get out of here?”
“I’d love to,” Weaver admitted. “I don’t think doctors know what they hell they’re doing; there’s a reason they call it a medical ‘practice.’ But we both appear to be a little short on clothes.”
“Got some guardsmen on the way over with some chocolate chips,” the SEAL said. “After which, by order of your friend the NSA, we’re going to take a little drive up to a town called Archer.”
“What’s there?” Weaver asked, wincing.
“Guess.”
* * *
Emma May Sands had turned seventy-nine the previous month. Two decades before when her late husband Arthur had retired they sold their house in Buffalo, New York, and moved to the small, rural town of Archer. It was not a “regular” retirement community and they had preferred it for that very reason. Archer was a small town consisting mostly of young couples who worked in and around Gainesville, generally in something connected to the university. There were also a few houses rented to students. It was a young town and despite the fact that Emma and Arthur knew they were old, they didn’t want to feel old. So they moved where there were young people around for the life and vitality.
And they were close to Shands, which was one of the best hospitals in North Florida. Arthur had a heart condition and proximity to a good hospital was important.
Shands had not helped, though, when Arthur finally suffered a terminal stroke. It had come in his sleep, thank God, and he passed lightly. After his passing Emma’s life hardly changed. She had to learn to cook for one but she continued to divide her time between the local Democratic Committee, which she had to admit was filled with hippy know-it-alls that didn’t understand you could be a Democrat and a patriot, and activities associated with the Episcopal Church.
That was until a three-foot-tall cat scratched on her back door and calmly walked into the front room to watch Oprah.
She wasn’t sure what to do. The cat walked on her back legs and, while she was clearly naked and just as clearly female, she didn’t seem bad. The cat had gray fur tinged to black in a line along her spine. Her belly was a lighter gray, almost white, with another line passing up the middle between her… mammaries and more highlighting on the tips of her ears. She had slanted eyes and either some sort of makeup or another highlighting running back from her eyes in a line.
Emma had been watching the news — it was almost impossible to avoid unless you wanted to watch Discovery all day — and knew that aliens or something were landing in Orlando, but that all seemed very remote to her. Life in Archer had been much the same. Oh, there had been a rush on the grocery store like there was going to be a hurricane or something and a few of her friends had urged her to move back to Buffalo and stay with her children until everything passed over.
But that didn’t mean she could pick up the
phone and call the police and tell them there was a three-foot-tall cat sitting in the front room watching the news. Little old ladies that did that had to go to the nursing home. There would be a time for her to go to the nursing home but it wasn’t that time yet.
So she went back into the room and watched Oprah. Oprah was cut off halfway through, though, with the news that more aliens, these ones bad guys, had landed in Eustis, which was closer to Archer than she really liked. There was a big fight going on between the aliens and the National Guard. She didn’t like that, and when the cat saw the aliens she hissed and spat something that sounded like angry words, so, nodding in request to the big cat, she changed the channel to Lifetime and sat and watched an episode of The Golden Girls. When the show was over it was getting late and the cat stood up and nodded at her.
“I have to go,” the cat said, very clearly. “I will see you tomorrow, Blanch.”
Emma didn’t bother to point out that her name wasn’t Blanch. Tracy Cooper, the poor dear, whose mind was getting a little out there, sometimes made the same mistake.
Emma went to bed at her normal hour but couldn’t get to sleep. After a while she got up and went downstairs and looked at Arthur’s collection of books. She preferred to read mystery and horror novels but Arthur had been a big reader of all those trashy science fiction novels. She suspected that somewhere in those stacks and stacks of moldering paperbacks was what she needed to know to talk to an alien cat and let her know where the litterbox was, for example.
She finally picked one up that looked as if it had been read many times called The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. It at least had a spaceship on the cover. She tried to read it but it made no sense. And the author couldn’t write very well at all; he left out all the articles. Finally, after fifty pages, she gave up and turned off the light, falling almost immediately into the light sleep of old age.
In the morning, as she was making tea, there was another scratching on the door. It was that cat again, wearing something like a long trench coat and a brimmed hat like a fedora against the early morning rain.
“Good morning, Blanch,” the cat enunciated precisely, taking off the coat and hat and shaking them.
“My name’s Emma,” Emma replied, taking the child-sized coat and setting it on the dryer with the hat perched on top.
“Mine is Nyarowlll,” the cat said. “Good morning, Emma. May I watch television?”
“Please do,” Emma replied. “I was just making tea and was going to have an English muffin. Or I think I have a can of cat food around?”
“No thank you, Emma,” Nyarowlll said. “I am not hungry.”
Emma rummaged in Arthur’s boxes again and found a book called Methuselah’s Children. It had the blurb “An Exciting New First Contact Novel” on the jacket so she thought it might help.
The book was not too long but it didn’t have much in it about aliens until towards the end. She’d gotten up for lunch and fixed herself a tuna sandwich, offering some of the tuna to Nyarowlll on a plate. The cat was watching some sort of old science fiction show with a big clunky robot and a guy in a silver suit but she said that she did not want any tuna.
When Emma came back to the sitting room she noticed that this book was by the same author that had written that silly moon thing. Apparently he did know a definite article. Maybe the moon thing was his first book; first novels sometimes were pretty bad.
She finished the book — she was a fast reader — before dinnertime. When Nyarowlll came into the sitting room looking for her Emma narrowed her eyes.
“You’re not going to change our babies, are you?” she asked. She had four children and two of them were still giving her grandchildren. Aliens had better not start changing babies. “We don’t stand for that sort of thing, here.”
“No, Emma,” Nyarowlll said. Her diction had improved, smoothed out, and if she had an accent it was slightly Midwestern. “We do not change babies. Emma, I think the thing I need to say is: Take me to your leader.” She stuck out one paw as if to shake hands.
Emma took the paw carefully, Nyarowlll looked as delicate as a big bird, and shook it, then put her other hand over it and said, gently. “Why don’t I just call someone, okay?”
* * *
There was a big barrier of police tape around a small ranch house, with two officers sitting on the hood of their squad cars smoking cigarettes, when Weaver and Chief Miller pulled up at the address they had been given. They showed their ID to the officers, then walked to the front door of the house, which was being guarded by a SWAT team sergeant.
Weaver waved at the sergeant and showed his Pentagon ID again.
“I’m Dr. Weaver with the DOD,” he said. “This is Command Master Chief Miller with SEAL Team Five. What do you have?”
“We received a call that a nonhostile alien was visiting this home. The home owner is Mrs. Emma Sand. When the first officers arrived they found a three-foot-tall… cat that walks on its hind legs. The homeowner alleges that the cat had been visiting for two days, watching television. When confronted by the officers the cat demanded to be ‘taken to our leaders.’ ” The SWAT sergeant was visibly sweating. “Upon investigation we found another gate in the woods behind the caller’s home. At that point we contacted the Department of Homeland Security, secured the area and awaited further information. The area is quarantined at this time but by the time we got here quarantine had already been breached.”
“Felinoid,” Weaver said, gently. “Three-foot-tall felinoid. Looks like a cat but it’s from another world so it’s not really a cat. And the other term you’re searching for is ‘bipedal.’ That’s walking on two legs. Gotta learn the jargon.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
“We’ve got it,” Miller said, tapping the sergeant on the shoulder. “You don’t get this much in Archer, huh?”
“No…”
“Command Master Chief.”
“No, Command Master Chief, we don’t.”
“Don’t worry,” Miller said, tapping him on the shoulder again. “We see it all the time.”
They walked into the front room where a pleasant-faced older woman was sitting in front of a tea service talking in low tones with, yes, a three-foot-tall bipedal felinoid.
“Hello,” Weaver said, nodding at the old lady. “I’m Dr. William Weaver with the Department of Defense and this is Command Master Chief Miller with the Navy. Are you Mrs. Sand?”
“Sands,” Emma said, starting to get up and staying in her chair at a wave from Weaver. “Emma May Sands.”
“And who is your visitor?” Weaver asked.
“This is Nyarowlll,” Emma said, getting the vowels as close as she could to what was essentially a meow.
“Hello, Nyarowlll,” Bill said.
“A doctor is someone who manages the physiology of your people?” Nyarowlll asked, carefully.
“It is also the term for an academic,” Bill pointed out. “I am an academic who is studying the gates.”
“I, too, am an academic,” Nyarowlll said, somewhat excitedly. “I study the physical processes of our world.”
“We’re probably the same sort of academic,” Bill replied with a closed-mouth smile.
“And your Navy, as I understand it, handles combat at sea,” Nyarowlll asked, looking at the chief. “Does it not? But surely this is a situation for land security.”
“I’m a SEAL, ma’am,” Miller replied. “We handle ground combat as well.”
“Oh, yes,” Nyarowlll said, making a strange sidling motion with her head. “I saw a program on them on the Discovery Channel. Very good soldiers.”
Miller decided to let that one pass.
“What can we do for you, Nyarowlll?” Bill asked.
“I am what you would call an ambassador from my world,” Nyarowlll answered. “I have come to this world to establish friendly relations and trade. I would like to meet with your world leadership and, barring that, I would like someone who is capable of establishing communications co
me to our world to meet with our leadership.”
“Ah,” Bill said, momentarily dumbfounded. “You have to understand that we are somewhat… uncertain about cross-gate contact. The first sentients we have… met from another intelligent society came through fighting.”
“That would be the T!Ch!R!,” Nyarowlll noted, letting out a stream of what was mostly clicks. “We, too, have had experience with them. They are a sort of pest that goes with the gates.”
“Let me call someone and see what I can arrange,” Bill replied, stepping out of the room. He pulled out his cell phone and called the NSA. He had an intermediate control at this point in the Pentagon but this seemed like something that needed a bit more direct approach.
He finally got through to her and explained what he had been told.
“Damn,” the NSA said. “State is going to be all over this like stink and we don’t actually know that she is friendly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bill said. “I’m wondering what they know about the gates. I’ve seen no sign of high technology about the visitor. But that doesn’t tell us anything about the far side.”
“Would you and Chief Miller be willing to travel to the far side and investigate this society while I do battle with State back here?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Weaver replied, sighing. “If Nyarowlll can survive on this side the converse is probably true.”
“Tell her you’ve contacted your leaders in this government. Then, go through, make contact with their government but don’t promise anything, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bill replied.
“Good luck.”
“Nyarowlll,” Weaver said. “Or should I call you Dr. Nyarowlll?”
“Nyarowlll will do,” the cat replied.
“I’ve contacted our leaders and told them what is happening. They asked me to go through and contact your leaders in turn. Would that be possible?”
“Certainly,” Nyarowlll said, standing up. “Now?”
“Chief?” Bill said.