Travellers in Magic (12 page)

“I lived at home for a long long time,” Helena Johnson was saying in her slow, scratchy voice. The reporters sat at the bar or at round tables scattered throughout the room and watched her raptly. The bar, which the hotel called a “lobby lounge,” had once been elegant, but two months of continuous occupancy by the reporters had changed it into something quite different. Cigarette butts had been ground into the lush carpet, drinks had been spilled, glasses broken. “Well, it was the Depression, you know, and I couldn't move out,” the old woman said. “And girls weren't supposed to live on their own back then—only loose girls lived by themselves. My father had been laid off, and I got a job as a stenographer. I was lucky to get it. I supported my family for two years, all by myself.”

She stopped for a moment, unwilling or unable to go on. The camera pulled back to show her seated on the bed, then cut to the small knot of reporters standing in her hotel room. Stevens saw himself and Gorce and all the rest of them. He remembered how tense he'd been, how worried that she wouldn't call on him. One of the reporters raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr.—Mr.—” Helena Johnson said.

“Look at that,” Stevens said in the bar. “She's senile, on top of everything else. How can she forget his name after two months?”

“Shhh,” Gorce said.

“Capelli, ma'am,” the reporter said. “I wondered how you felt while you were supporting your family. Didn't it make you feel proud?”

“Objection,” Gorce said in the bar. “He's leading the witness.”

“Shhh,” Stevens said.

“Well, of course I was proud,” Helena Johnson said. “I was putting my younger brother through college, too. He had to stop after two years, though, because I lost my job.”

Her manner was poised, regal. She reminded Stevens of nothing so much as Queen Victoria. And yet she hadn't even finished grade school. “Look at her,” he said in disgust. He raised his glass in a toast. “This is the woman who's going to save the world.”

No one knew how the aliens had chosen Helena Johnson. A month after they had appeared, their round ships like gold coins above the seven largest cities in the world, they had jammed radio frequencies and announced their terms for a meeting. One ship would land outside of Los Angeles, and only twenty reporters would be allowed to board.

Stevens's first surprise was that they looked human, or at least humanoid. (After the meeting scientists would speculate endlessly about androids and holograms and parallel biology.) Stevens sat on an ordinary folding chair and watched closely as the alien stepped up to the front of the room. Near him he saw reporters looking around for clues to the aliens' technology, but the room was bare except for the chairs and made of something that might have been steel.

“Good afternoon,” the alien said. Its voice sounded amplified, but Stevens could see no microphone anywhere. “Hello. We are your judges. We have judged you and found you wanting. Some of us were of the opinion that you should be destroyed immediately. We have decided not to do this. We have found a representative of your species. She will make the decision. At midnight on your New Year's Eve she will tell you if you are to live or die.”

No one spoke. Then a bony young woman, her thin black hair brushed back and away from her face, jumped up from her seat. It was the first time Stevens saw Gorce in person, though he had heard of her from his colleagues. He held his breath without knowing it. “Why do you feel you have the right to sit in judgment over us?” she asked. Her voice was level.

“No questions,” the alien said. “We will give you the name of the woman who is to represent you. Her name is Helena Johnson. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. And there is one more thing. Brian Capelli, will you stand please?”

Capelli stood. His face was as white as his shirt. The alien made no motion that Stevens could see, but suddenly there was a sharp noise like a backfire and Capelli's chair burst into flames. Capelli moaned a little and then seemed to realize where he was and stopped.

“We have power and we will use it,” the alien said.

Not surprisingly, with every state and federal organization mobilized to look for her, Helena Johnson was found within two hours. She lived in a state-sponsored nursing home. She was asleep when the FBI agent found her, and when she woke she seemed unable to answer the simplest question. “What is your name?” the agent asked. Helena Johnson gave no sign that she had heard him.

But within a month she seemed to have accepted the situation as her due. The government put her up in the best hotel in Washington and hired nurses, hairdressers, manicurists, companions. She had an ulcer on her leg that had never been seen to at the home, and the government sent out a highly-paid specialist to treat it. Another specialist discovered that she wasn't so much disoriented as hard of hearing, and she was fitted with a hearing aid.

She granted interviews with the twenty reporters daily, then screened the tapes and deleted anything she didn't like. The world discovered to its dismay that Helena johnson's life hadn't been an easy one, and everything possible was done to make it easier. Television programs now played for an audience of one: stations showed
The Nutcracker
over and over again because she had talked about being taken to see it as a child. Newspapers stopped reporting crime and wars—crime and wars had, in fact, nearly disappeared—and ran headlines about the number of kittens adopted. She got an average of ten thousand letters a day: most of them came with a gift, and about a third were marriage proposals.

“So my co-worker, Doris, she said the boss would let you stay on if you would, well, do favors for him,” Helena Johnson was saying. “You know what I mean. And I decided that I'd rather starve. But then the next day I thought, well, it's not just me that's depending on the money I earn. It's my parents, and my brother who I was putting through college—did I tell you about that?—and I decided that if he asked me I'd do it. I'm not ashamed to tell you that that's what I thought.” The camera cut to the reporters again. Most of them were nodding sympathetically. “So the next day I was called into his office. I was called alone, so I thought, here it comes. Usually when he fired you he called you in in a group. He was standing behind his desk—I can see it now, as clear as day—and he opened his mouth to say something. And then he shook his head, like this, and he said, ‘Forget it, girl, go home. You're too ugly.' ”

“I wonder if that guy's still alive,” Stevens said in the bar.

“I hope for his sake he's dead.”

“Gone to the grave never knowing he doomed the world with one sentence.”

“She doesn't seem too bitter.”

“Who knows what she seems? Who knows what she's thinking? Look at her—she looks like the cat that ate the canary. She's going to play this for all it's worth.”

“I got married at the beginning of the war,” Helena Johnson said. “World War Two, that was. I was thirty, a bit old for those days. My husband met one of those female soldiers over there in Europe, one of those WACs, and left me for her. Left me and our baby son.”

“Is that when you went back to your maiden name?” Gorce asked.

“Yes, and that's a very sharp question, young lady,” Helena Johnson said.

“I don't see why,” Stevens said, in the bar.

“Because she wants to talk about herself, that's why,” Gorce said.

“My husband's name was Furnival,” Helena Johnson said. “Isn't that a dreadful name? It sounds just like funeral, that's what I always thought. I went back to my maiden name as soon as I heard about him and that WAC. They tell me he's dead now. Died in 1979. I lost track of him a long time ago.”

“And then you had to raise your baby all by yourself,” Gorce said.

“That's right, I did,” Helena Johnson said, smiling at her. “And he left me too, soon as he could get a job. He was about seventeen. Seventeen, that's right.”

“Have they found him yet?” Stevens asked in the bar.

“They traced him to that trailer camp in Florida,” Gorce said. “He left last April, and they haven't been able to pick him up from there. Probably on the run.”

“You'd be too.”

“I don't know. This could be just what she needs, an emotional reunion with the prodigal son. Make great television.”

“The prodigal son has a record as long as your arm—assault, armed robbery, breaking and entering.…”

“Do you think the Feds will grant him that pardon?”

“Probably.”

On the screen the interview was coming to an end. “Anything else you want to say, Miss Johnson?” the hired companion asked.

“No, I'm feeling a little tired,” she said. “Oh, I did want to thank—what was his name? Oh, dear, I can't remember it. A young man in Texas who sent me this ring.” She held the back of her hand to the camera. The diamond caught the light and sparkled. “Thank you so much.”

Her face faded. “The Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies” came on over the credits and several people in the bar groaned loudly. The bartender turned the sound down and then turned it back up for the nightly news.

“Good evening,” the anchorman said. “Our top story today concerns the daily interview with Helena Johnson. During the course of the interview Miss Johnson spoke once again about her childhood and growing up during the Depression, about her marriage and son. She had this to say about her husband.”

“Good God, she's the most boring woman in the world!” Stevens said. “Why do we have to sit through this drivel again?”

“You know why,” Gorce said. “In case she's watching.”

“In other news, the government reported that the number of survivors of the Denver fire-bombing stands at two,” the anchorman said. “Both the survivors are listed in stable condition. Both have burns over fifty percent of their bodies. Skin grafts are scheduled to begin tomorrow.”

“God, that was stupid,” Gorce said. “I wonder whose idea it was to attack that ship.”

“Well, how the hell could we know? All we'd seen them do was burn a chair, and any special-effects man could have done that. What if they were just bluffing?”

“And now we know,” Gorce said.

“Now we know.”

“Government sources say the bombs were not nuclear weapons,” the anchorman said. “There is no radioactive fallout at all from the bombing. Miss Johnson has sent both the survivors a telegram expressing her wishes for their speedy recovery.”

“Bully for her,” Stevens said.

“Come off it,” Gorce said. “She's not that bad.”

“She's a horror. She hasn't called on me once the last three days, and you know why? It's because I accidentally called her ‘Ms.' ”

“I feel sorry for her. What a hard life she's had.”

“Sure you do—she loves you. Look at the way she beamed at you all through the interview today. But I guess you're right. I guess she's been lonely. She was only married a year before her husband was called up.”

“I didn't mean just her marriage—”

“Now don't go giving me that feminist look,” Stevens said, though in fact Gorce's steady gaze hadn't changed. “You know what I meant. If they're not married they usually have a career, something they're interested in. Like you. But this woman had nothing.”

“Were you ever married, Stevens?”

“No.” He looked at her, surprised by the question. “Relationships don't work out for me. Too much travelling, I guess. How about you?”

“No,” she said.

On the screen a scientist was summarizing the latest attempt to communicate with the ships, and then the news ended. “Stay tuned for
Cinderella
following tonight's news,” the announcer said over the credits.

“Cinderella!” Stevens said, disgusted. “Come on, guys. She can't be awake this late.”

“Shhh.”

“What—you think she'll hear me? She's on the top floor.”

The bartender turned the television off. Stevens and Gorce ordered another round. “You know what I was thinking?” Gorce said. “Have you thought about these aliens? I mean really thought about them?”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “Like everyone else in America. I've got a new theory, too. I bet it's a test.”

“A what?”

“A test. It doesn't matter what the old bitch chooses, whether she wants us destroyed or not. It's like a laboratory experiment. They're watching us to see how we act under pressure. If we do okay, if we don't all go nuts, we'll be asked to join some kind of galactic federation.”

Gorce said nothing for a while. The dim light in the bar made her face look sallow, darkened the hollows under her eyes. “You ever read comic books when you were a kid, Stevens?”

“Huh? No.”

“That's what it always turned out to be in the comic books. Some kind of test. All these weird things would happen—the super-hero might even die—but in the end everything returned to normal. Because the kids reading the comics never liked it when things changed too much. The only explanation the writers could come up with was that it had all been a test. But I don't think these tests happen outside of comic books.”

“Okay, so what's your theory?”

“Well, think about what's happening here. These guys have set themselves up as the final law, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one. Sure, they picked the old woman, but that's just the point—
they
picked her. They probably know how she's going to vote, or they have a good idea. What kind of people would do something like that?”

“I don't know.”

“Pretty sadistic people, I'd say. If there was some kind of galactic federation, wouldn't they just observe us and contact us when we were ready? I mean, we were on our way to blowing ourselves up without any outside help at all. Maybe these people travel around the galaxy getting their jollies from watching helpless races cower for months before someone makes the final decision. These aliens are probably outlaws, some kind of renegades. They're so immoral no galactic federation would have them.”