Touched by an Alien

by Gini Koch

  “So their world was close to the sun that went supernova?”

  “We assume.” White sounded impressed. “You’re very bright.”

  “Which is why Christopher there isn’t ready to settle down with me, like Martini is. We’ve established that. I’m sort of the open book in this library, let’s not forget. No cracks,” I said, quickly, looking up at Martini. “I really want some answers.”

  He nodded with fake solemnity, and White went on. “You’re right, there was plenty in the spaceship beyond books, and yes, we’ve been studying everything since the crash itself.”

  There was something about the way he said the word “we” that made me stop. “You aren’t really with the American government, are you?”

  “Well,” White said, as Martini gently but firmly took my arm and started me moving again, “we do have some American government people involved and in the know. But I told you already, we’re a world organization.”

  “Which world?”

  I could see I was right by the way White’s eyes shifted, just a bit. “In the car,” was all he said, though. The car was another gray limo; I decided they must be standard issue. It wasn’t the same one I’d been in before, which was a relief.

  Christopher held the door to the back seats open for me, and I climbed in, humming the Men in Black theme song. I made sure I was in the forward-facing seat, so I could see the driver as well as the other passengers.

  “They’re fictional,” Martini said. He got in and settled himself right next to me. “I’m real,” he added as he put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Real annoying,” Christopher said as he closed the door after White and Gower, then climbed into the front passenger seat. I wasn’t sure I disagreed, though I didn’t protest about the arm or the fact that Martini had pulled me closer. I felt safer next to him for some reason, illogical or not.

  Our usual driver and pilot took the wheel. “Care to tell me who this is?” I asked White.

  “James Reader,” White answered, somewhat reluctantly I thought.

  “I’m a human, like you,” Reader said, turning around and flashing me a toothy grin. “I actually was a male model, if you want an autograph.”

  I felt my jaw drop. “Oh, my God, I recognize you! You did the big Calvin Klein spread a few years ago that raised so much controversy.”

  “Which one was that?” Gower asked. “Isn’t controversial pretty much the definition of a Calvin Klein ad campaign?”

  Reader grinned again. It was an awesome grin, making Martini’s seem just ordinary. “Mine had the most controversy. Then I retired at the height of my fame to pursue my passions. Which was the cover story for joining up with this crew.” He winked at me. “Don’t worry, babe. They’re okay. Odd in their way, but okay. I’ll look out for you, even keep the horndog here at bay if you want me to.”

  “He really is gay,” Martini said.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let anyone hassle my homegirl here,” Reader said as he turned around. “We humans have to watch each other’s backs, or you aliens are gonna take all the credit for saving the world.” Reader started the car, and we drove off.

  I looked out the windows—there were several gray SUVs moving out with us. “All the boys coming along?”

  “All the ones here, yes,” White said. “We have to make sure you’re protected.”

  “Um, why?”

  “You were identified as stopping a terrorist, who the media have decided was part of the Al Dejahl terrorist organization,” Christopher answered in a clipped tone. I got the feeling Gower was right—he wasn’t happy about this screw up. “That’ll alert any superbeings who might be in control to the fact you’re a threat.”

  “Great. So, what planet are you from?”

  Gower was the one who answered, which I found interesting. “We can’t pronounce our native language here—humans can’t understand it.”

  “Worse than Yiddish,” Martini added.

  Gower rolled his eyes. “Jeff, shut up. We’re from the Alpha Centauri system. You call our suns Alpha Centauri A and B. We call them, well, the big sun and the little sun. And our world, the world. In our own language, of course. People are more alike than you’d realize, even people from different planets.”

  “So, you’re saying you’re humans?” I was taking this very well and was rather proud of myself.

  “No, only Earth has humans. There are real differences, significant ones.”

  “We’re better in bed,” Martini whispered to me.

  “Jeff!” Gower looked as fed up as he sounded. “Give it a rest for the whole five minutes it’ll take me to explain this.”

  “Fine,” Martini sighed. He slid down in the seat a bit. “I’ll behave.”

  Gower gave him a look that said he didn’t believe a word of it, then went on. “We were one of the planets the original aliens warned, just like Earth. We call the aliens Ancients, because their race was much older than ours. The ship that arrived at our planet didn’t crash, but the crew couldn’t survive in our atmosphere. The ones who landed here would have died as well. Their world, we’ve figured out, was a lot closer, spacewise, to the one the parasites came from than ours or yours, and it made them very different from our two races.”

  “They reached our world a hundred years before yours,” White added. “We didn’t have good enough space travel to reach any other inhabited world for decades after they landed, though.”

  Gower nodded. “We got most of what we needed from the Ancients’ spaceship. Just as Earth scientists did and are still doing today. But we’ve had more time than you.”

  “Earth did a better job with translation,” Christopher added.

  “True,” Gower agreed. “We were clear a menace was coming, and we could figure out that more worlds than ours were warned. They had a star map, and we used it to determine which worlds were the ones presumed in danger.”

  “We came to Earth to help,” White added. “You needed us. You still do.”

  “So these brilliant Ancients set out to warn all the worlds, and they don’t wear space suits? How stupid is that?” I felt bad for asking, but it had to be said.

  “You go, girl,” Reader called from the driver’s seat. “That was my first question, too. You’ll love the answer.”

  “They thought they could adapt,” Gower said in a resigned tone. “They were shapeshifters from all we can tell, and they’d been able to do it before. But their planet was closer to the galactic core than ours are, and things are different there than out here.”

  “So how many planets is it safe to assume they couldn’t adapt to?” I felt a pang of pity for these Ancients, doing their best to save the galaxy and in a way failing before they could even begin.

  “Most of them,” Gower said with a sigh. “Most of the inhabited planets are far from the core, not near it. We don’t know why. We’ve been too busy fighting to keep this threat at bay to do any form of exploration.”

  “They might be figuring it out back home,” Martini added. “But we don’t know. Radio waves take forever to get through, so communications is pretty poor. None of us are going back, but we knew that coming here.” For the first time since I’d started this journey he didn’t look confident or happy—he looked lonely and sad.

  “You leave a lot of family back there?” I asked quietly—it wasn’t a raucous moment.

  “Not a lot. No wife,” he added with his normal smile.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Glad to see that moment of personal exposure wasn’t going to last longer than a nanosecond. Not that I could blame him. They might be aliens, but they were also clearly men.

  “Most of us don’t have immediate family back on our home world,” Gower said. “Our families are here.”

  “What do you mean, here?” This was getting weirder by the moment.

  “We perfected a transference system, where we don’t need spaceships to get here,” White replied. “It works very well to send us from our home wor
ld to Earth.”

  “But we can’t go back,” Christopher added. “Our world’s core is different from Earth’s; the magnetic pull here won’t allow the system to work in reverse. So, for some, it was better to send the whole clan out.”

  “Why so? That seems odd, really.”

  “It’s how they are,” Reader said. “Think of them like a huge extended Italian family and you’ll be on the right track.”

  “You’re all related?” I looked around. “That would explain the hunkiness, but not your skin tone,” I said to Gower.

  He shrugged. “My father married an African-American woman. Earth genes dominate over A-C ones, at least the ones that deal with physical appearance.”

  “So you’re an alien-human hybrid?”

  “Yep. Jeff’s a pure alien, though,” Gower added with a chuckle.

  “My parents both came as operatives,” Martini said. “I’m Earth-born but full A-C blood. Same with Christopher and most of our younger agents.”

  “So, you’re U.S. citizens?”

  “Yep, with all the rights therein,” Martini confirmed. “We’re also considered political refugees, almost like the Indian Nations.”

  “We have various areas assigned to us,” Gower added. “All over the world but centered here in the U.S. Superbeings can and do form anywhere and everywhere, but for whatever reason, they seem to land in the U.S. about twenty times more often than elsewhere.”

  “Go U.S.A. What about you?” I asked White. “When did you arrive?”

  “I came as a young man,” he said. “Those of us who weren’t born here are naturalized citizens. It’s important that we show loyalty to the country that accepted us.”

  “So you’re a native from Alpha Centauri?”

  “Yes, I was born on A-C, though I now consider myself an American. My wife came with me. She felt the same.”

  I thought about it. Christopher’s surliness was suddenly even more understandable. “Your son favors his mother, I see. Must be hard, screwing up in front of your dad.”

  Christopher turned around, and he looked furious. But I could really see it now—the same eyes, nose, and mouth as White. “Better than lying to my father,” he spat out.

  “But not as useful or fun.” I looked up at Martini. “So, where do you fit into the family?”

  He grinned. “I call him Uncle Mr. White. And that’s Cousin Paul,” he added with a nod toward Gower. “His father is my mother’s sister’s husband’s brother.”

  “I can’t wait to see how you all handle Christmas. So, your father is Uncle Mr. White’s brother?”

  “Nope, my mother is his sister. Keep the last names straight.” He looked over at Gower. “She’s starting to slip. Christopher might get interested after all.”

  “Not likely,” he snapped.

  I gave up trying to keep the family relationships straight. I figured I’d ask Dad to map them into his family tree software program once I knew if I was making it out of this alive or not. “So, how many Alpha Centaurites are there here on Earth?”

  “Alpha Centaurions,” Christopher corrected in a snippy tone.

  “We call ourselves A-Cs,” Gower said quickly. “Trust me, it’s easier. And, there are several thousand of us. Not all are working as agents, of course.”

  “Not all are amazingly hot looking men? Wow, crushing news. Of course, I don’t have any really moronic girlfriends to fix Christopher there up with anyway.” He didn’t reply, but I could see his neck turning red. I wondered if I’d ever see my car again, then decided that was the least of my worries. “So, what do all the female A-Cs do for fun and profit?”

  Reader was the one who answered, as we pulled up to an area enclosed by a high, nasty-looking chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that meant business. “They’re the scientists.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE GATE SWUNG OPEN, but there was no indication of an electronic eye or any kind of mechanism. There were also no people around.

  “How does it do that?” I asked Martini.

  “Well, there’s these things called hinges, they move and let the part we call a gate open up, and—” I elbowed him in the ribs, hard, before he could finish.

  “I have the beeper,” Reader told me. “It’s just a garage door opener, really.”

  This was a letdown, but, oh, well. I looked out the windows. There wasn’t much around, but the fencing seemed to go on for miles. “Where are we?”

  “The ranch where the Ancients’ ship crashed,” Gower answered.

  “This is the real one,” Reader added. “There’s a fake the government runs that tourists and UFO theorists think is the real crash site.”

  “Why? I mean, why show me a crash site? Wasn’t it picked clean years ago?” The wisdom of hiding a real UFO crash site wasn’t something I needed explained.

  “As far as the fake site and the general public knows, yes.” Gower gave me a friendly smile. “Relax, we’re not taking you out here to kill you and bury your body off the beaten track.”

  “It’s just stop two on the UFO Tour,” Martini added. “You’ll love it. Most women want to marry the first alien they’ve met after seeing the crash site.”

  “I killed the first alien I met,” I reminded him.

  “Nope, that was a superbeing,” Martini corrected cheerfully. “None of us from A-C are superbeings, other than in the sack.”

  “I’m sure. Just in case, though, I have great cell phone reception, and I’m sure my dad can get a call through.”

  “You worry too much,” Martini said. “Want a Coke?”

  “You have that?”

  “It’s a limo,” Reader reminded me. “We have more than Coke.”

  “But since your fridge was only stocked with Coke products and frozen dinners, we thought we’d be nice,” Christopher said. He looked over his shoulder at Martini. “Nothing but junk food. Good luck ever seeing a home-cooked meal from that one.”

  “I’ll manage. I’m all about the nice restaurant experience,” Martini said as he produced an iced glass bottle of Coca-Cola from the inside of the door next to him, popped the cap off, and handed it to me. “Straw?”

  “Thanks.” I decided not to question why they had bottles and not cans, nor how they were keeping them frosty in the heat. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be an answer designed to inform or comfort.

  We bumped along, me sipping my Coke and wondering just how thoroughly Christopher had searched my apartment and why. I looked behind us—all the SUVs seemed to be following. “We’re sort of a conspicuous parade, if you were wanting to stay under the radar,” I mentioned to White.

  “Never complain about having too much backup,” he said.

  “Cryptic. How refreshing.”

  “We’re here,” Reader said as he stopped the car.

  I looked around. “Not much different here than there.”

  Christopher got out and opened the rear door on Martini’s side. “We go the rest of the way on foot, princess.”

  “Nice that we have you as our official doorman,” I said. Martini and White got out, Gower indicated I should go before him. Martini and Christopher both offered me their hands to help me out. I avoided both. Martini gave me a hurt look. “Big girl, not impressing anyone, clothes already ruined. When I’m dressed up, feel free to help me out. Like this, why bother?”

  Christopher snorted. “That should be a treat. You wear a tiara when you go out, princess?”

  I gave him what I hoped was an icy stare. “I’m not really sure where you’ve gotten the ‘princess’ idea from, but stow it, manservant.”

  White looked pained. “Christopher, manners would be appreciated.”

  “Yeah, why ask her for any,” Christopher muttered as he turned away.

  “What is his problem with me?” I asked Martini under my breath as we started trudging toward what looked like more of the nothing that was around us. Christopher had stalked on ahead, Gower and White were in front of us, Reader behind. The rest of the boys in the b
and seemed to be staying with their cars.

  Martini actually seemed to give this some thought. “I don’t know,” he said finally. I was fairly sure he did know but didn’t want to tell me.

  “I think he likes her,” Reader said, coming up on my other side. “And he doesn’t like that he does.”

  “Great,” Martini muttered. “You know you’re mine, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Insofar as it matters, if it meant having to choose between you, Christopher, and marrying a tree, you’re number one.”

  “I’ll take it. I plan to grow on you.”

  “Like fungus?”

  “I was thinking more like a vine,” Reader said.

  “Not a clinging one,” Martini said. “More like a jungle vine you can enjoy swinging from.”

  “Sounds better than having to lower my intelligence level to please Mr. Personality up there.”

  I pondered this as we went along. It was odd. Martini I could understand. He’d seen me check him out. But I’d had almost no interaction with Christopher before he started being a jerk. If Reader was right, then Christopher had made his decisions about me based on, what? My car? My apartment? How would he get “princess” out of my fabulous housekeeping skills? Or my stuff?

  I decided not to care. Martini was enough to deal with on top of everything else. I’d worry about Christopher if and when he became a real issue. Besides, Reader was gay, so maybe he just thought Christopher was interested in me because he wasn’t interested in him. After all, in my experience most guys expressed interest more along Martini’s lines, not by snarling and snarking at me.

  There was another ringing noise. This time, since more than twenty aliens weren’t staring me down, I didn’t jump, just dug my phone out of my purse. “Mom, what’s up?”

  “Kitty, are you all right? Your father said that really was you I saw.”

  “Yeah, it was me, with Homeland Security now, blah, blah, blah. I’m sure Dad told you. I thought you were on a plane.”