Travellers in Magic (13 page)

“That's a cheerful thought.”

Gorce looked around. “Hey, where's Nichols?”

“I don't know. He said something this morning—”

“What?”

“He was going to try to talk to her alone.”

“He can't do that.”

“You're damn right he can't. Look at all the security they've got posted around her.”

“No, I mean he can't get a story the rest of us don't have. We've got to go up there.”

“Forget it.”

“Come on. We can stop by for a visit or something. Play a game of cards. She'll be happy to see us.”

“You're crazy.”

“All right, you stay here. I'm going up and talk to her. She won't mind—she likes me.”

“Gorce—”

Gorce stood up. “Gorce, don't do that. For God's sake—Melissa!”

He wouldn't have remembered her first name if they hadn't done interviews with each other for their respective news stations. “This is Melissa Gorce, reporting from Washington,” she'd said, and he'd thought that he couldn't have come up with a name less like her. Using it seemed to work. She stopped, and the mad light in her eyes went out. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe you're right.”

The next day, at the daily interview, Stevens found out how right he'd been. The number of FBI guards at the door had been doubled, and when his ID had been checked and he'd finally been let in he saw that Nichols was gone.

“He tried to get inside her room last night,” Capelli said. “The guards said they were reaching for their guns when they saw this bright flash of light go off. He was practically unrecognizable—they had to check his dental records to make sure it was him.”

“He'd been Denverized,” another reporter said, trying to laugh.

“He wanted to commit suicide, you ask me,” Capelli said. His hands were shaking.

“You see?” Stevens couldn't resist saying to Gorce. “You see what I mean?”

The two cameramen finished setting up, and Helena Johnson's companion opened the floor to questions. No one brought up the dead reporter and Helena Johnson didn't mention him; maybe, Stevens thought, she didn't know. To Stevens's relief she called on him for the first time in four days.

“I was wondering,” he said, “how you spend your time. What are your hobbies?”

She smiled at him almost flirtatiously. He was surprised at how much hatred he felt for her at that moment. “Oh, I keep busy,” she said. “I look through my mail, though of course I don't have time to answer all my correspondence. And I watch some television, I watch videotapes people send me, I have my hair done … I enjoy mealtimes especially, though there's a lot of food my stomach can't take. Do you know, I'd never eaten lobster in my life until last week.”

Gorce was right, he thought. She does like talking about herself. If they survived New Year's Eve he'd have to keep in contact with Gorce—she was one smart woman.

Someone asked Helena Johnson a question about her father, and the old woman droned on. She's already told us this story, Stevens thought. There were a few more questions, and then Gorce raised her hand. Helena Johnson smiled at her. “Yes, dear?”

“What do you think of the aliens, Miss Johnson?”

“Gorce!” Capelli whispered behind her. The other reporters thought he'd lost his nerve at the first press conference, when his chair had burst into flames behind him.

“I suppose I'm grateful to them,” Helena Johnson said. “If it wasn't for them I'd still be in that dreadful old age home.”

“But what do you think of the way they've interfered with us? Of the way they want to make our decisions for us?”

Capelli wasn't the only reporter who became visibly nervous at this question. Stevens felt he could have cheerfully strangled her.

“I don't know, dear. You mean they want to tell us what to do?”

“They want to tell you what to do. They want to force you to make a choice.”

“Oh, I don't mind making the choice. In fact—”

Oh, Lord, Stevens thought. She's going to tell us right now.

The companion stepped forward. “Our hour with Miss Johnson is almost up,” she said smoothly. “Do you have anything else you want to say, Miss Johnson?”

“Yes, I do,” the old woman said. “I wanted to say—Oh, dear, I've forgotten.”

The companion moved to the desk and brought her a slip of paper. “Oh yes, that's right,” Helena Johnson said, looking at it. “I wanted to tell everyone not to get me a Christmas present. I know a lot of people have been worrying about what to get me, and I just want to tell them I have everything I need.”

So give a contribution to charity instead, Stevens thought, but Helena Johnson seemed to have finished. Did she neglect to mention charity because she knew there would be no charities, or anything else, in a few weeks? It was amazing how paranoid they had all become, how they analyzed her slightest gesture.

The companion ushered everyone out of the room. The reporters went downstairs to stand in front of the hotel and tape a short summary of the interview for their stations. Upstairs, Stevens knew, Helena Johnson and the cameramen were going over the footage, editing out parts where she thought she looked too old, too vulnerable or too uncertain.

He felt depressed by the interview, by Nichols's death. The old lady hadn't given them any hope at all this time. What would he be doing a few weeks from now? If she said no, he could probably have his pick of assignments. But if she said yes he'd be charred bones and ashes, like poor Nichols, like all the people in Denver. God, what a horrible way to die. She had to say no, she had to.

On New Year's Eve everyone was either watching television, getting drunk or doing both at once. The last show would be broadcast live. Stevens had taken a sedative for the final interview, and he knew he wasn't the only one. There had been no commercials on any network for the last five hours; if the old lady said no, Stevens had heard, there would be commercials every three minutes.

They were let into the room for the last time at exactly midnight. “Hello,” Helena Johnson said, smiling at all of them. The smell of fear was very strong.

“I have been chosen by the aliens to decide Earth's future,” she said. “I don't understand why I was chosen, and neither does anyone else. But I have taken the responsibility very seriously, and I feel I have been conscientious in doing my duty.”

Get on with it, Stevens thought. Yes or no.

“I have to say I have enjoyed my stay here at the hotel,” she said. “But it is impossible not to think that all of you must consider me very stupid indeed.” Oh, God, Stevens thought. Here it comes. The old lady's revenge. “I know very well that none of you were interested in me, in Helena Hope Johnson. If the aliens hadn't chosen me I would probably be at the nursing home right now, if not dead of neglect. My leg would be in constant pain, and the nurses would think I was senile because I couldn't hear the questions they asked me.

“So at first I thought I would say yes. I would say that Earth deserves to be destroyed, that its people are cruel and selfish and will only show kindness if there's something in it for them. And sometimes not even then. Why do you think my son hasn't come to visit me?” The yellow eye had filled with tears.

Oh, shit, Stevens thought. I knew it would come to this. He had heard her son was dead, killed in a bar fight.

“But then I remembered what this young lady had said,” Helena Johnson said. “Miss Gorce. She asked me what I thought about the aliens interfering with our lives, with my life. Well, I thought about it, and I didn't like what I came up with. They have no right to decide whether we will live or die, whoever they are. All my life people have decided for me, my parents, my teachers, my bosses. But that's all over with now. My answer is—no answer. I will not give them an answer.”

No one moved for a long moment. Then one of the agents stationed outside the door ran into the room. “The ships are leaving!” he said. “They're taking off!”

Suddenly everyone was cheering. Stevens hugged Gorce, hugged Capelli, hugged the FBI agent. The reporters lifted Gorce and threw her into the air until she yelled at them to stop. I hope the camera's getting all this, Stevens thought. It's great television.

The reporters, quieter now, came over to Helena Johnson to thank her. Stevens saw Gorce kiss the old woman carefully on the cheek. “You'd better leave now,” the companion said. “She gets tired so easily.”

One by one the reporters went downstairs to the bar. Helena Johnson and Gorce were left alone together. Stevens went outside and waited for Gorce near the door. He wanted to tell her she'd been right to ask that question.

Gorce seemed pleased to see him when she came out. “What'd she want to talk to you about?” he asked.

“She wanted me to ghostwrite her autobiography.”

Stevens laughed. “No one would read it,” he said. “We know far too much about her as it is.”

“It don't matter—they've already given her a million-dollar contract.”

“So what'd you say?”

“Well, she offered me ten percent. What do you think I said? I said yes.”

“Congratulations,” he said, happy for her. Outside he heard police sirens and what sounded like firecrackers.

“Thanks,” she said. “Do you want t-t-to go out somewhere and celebrate?”

He looked at her with surprise. He had never known her to stutter before. She wasn't bad-looking, he thought, but too bony, and her chin and forehead were too long. She had to have gotten her job through her mad bravery and sharp common sense, because she sure didn't look like a blow-dried TV reporter. “Sorry,” he said. “I told my girlfriend I'd call her when this whole thing was over.”

“You never told me you had a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, well, it never came up,” he said. “See you, Gorce.”

She looked at him a long time. “You know, Stevens, you better start being nicer to me,” she said. “What if the aliens pick me to save the world next time?”

A
FTERWORD

It seems to me that there aren't nearly enough old women in science fiction. Or in real life, for that matter. When we put these people in nursing homes, send them to the margins of society, we are depriving ourselves of an extraordinary amount of accumulated wisdom. I wanted to write a story in which a neglected old woman has power.

A very minor reason for writing this story is that I wanted to call both men and women by their last names: Stevens and Gorce. Read almost any book on any subject and you'll find that the men are referred to by their last names and the women are called Joan and Betty Ann. Even feminists do this; even Douglas Hofstadter, in an essay
about
sexism in language (“A Person Paper on Purity in Language,”
Metamagical Themas
) ends by calling William Safire “Safire” but Bobbye Sorrels “Ms. Sorrels.” Once you start noticing this sort of thing you find it all over; it's weirdly insidious.

P
RELIMINARY
N
OTES ON THE
J
ANG

Simon stood in front of the door, panting a little from the climb up three flights of stairs, wondering if he had come to the right place. He checked the piece of paper in his hand again—3460C, the same as the address painted in cracking numbers over the peephole. The sound of an instrument—a sitar?—could be heard faintly through the door, and the hallway smelled like ginger. Why would his advisor want to live here? He shrugged and knocked. There didn't seem to be any bell.

The door opened—the sound of the instrument grew louder—and a man with an enormous black mustache stood in front of him. “Yes?” the man said. A threadbare oriental rug lay on the floor of the hallway behind him.

“I—I'm sorry,” Simon said, stepping back. The man was standing too close, he felt his space being violated. “I have the wrong—That is, I'm looking for—I don't suppose Dr. Glass lives here.”

“No, no doctors here,” the man said. He wore loose green trousers and a yellow tunic. Simon couldn't place his accent. “You are sick?” He studied Simon intensely from under jet-black eyebrows. Eyes and eyebrows were the same color.

“No, he's not—not a medical doctor—” Simon said. “Never mind. Thanks anyway.”

“No one here but my family,” the man said. “We celebrate. My wife, my second wife, her husband, my cousins and their children, my wife's cousin, you have no word for it in English …”

Simon had started to draw kinship diagrams in his mind. The smell of spices was making him a little dizzy. He thought he could hear feet stamping beyond the hallway, bells shaking. His second wife's
husband
?

“Where—Where are you from?” Simon said, unable not to ask. He had probably transgressed somehow, broken some taboo, at the very least irritated his informant. His informant? Who was he kidding? But his textbooks had never mentioned how to deal with a situation like this.

“We are the Jang,” the man said. He bowed courteously and began to close the door. “Good day.” Simon turned away, aware that he had been dismissed. His mind was humming by the time he reached the street.

“Dr. Glass!” Simon said, running into his advisor's office.

“Hello, Simon,” Dr. Glass said, looking up from his desk. “You missed a good party Saturday.”

“I—Listen, I tried to find it, I ended up in this place—”

“Place?” Dr. Glass said. “Sit down, I've never seen you so excited. What do you mean?”

“I went to your house,” Simon said. He fished out the scrap of paper from his pocket. “Here—3460, right? Only the guy who answered the door—”

“Twenty-four sixty,” Dr. Glass said.

“What?”

“You went to the wrong place,” Dr. Glass said. “You missed a great party.”