George Alec Effinger - The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything
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2024-11-19
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THE ALIENS WHO KNEW, I MEAN, EVERYTHING
George Alec Effinger
An interesting thing has happened during the evolution of the science fiction genre: many sf stories
have portrayed our world being saved-or destroyed-by beings from far stars rather than by God. In
essence, God has been replaced in science fiction by creatures from planets orbiting other stars.
Perhaps that isn't surprising in our technological era, but George Alec Effinger's short story here has
some thoughts that may be as new and comical to you as they are to me.
George Alec Effinger has written many short stories and novels during the past fifteen years; the
latter include What Entropy Means to Me and The Wolves of Memory.
I was sitting at my desk, reading a report on the brown pelican situation, when
the secretary of state burst in. "Mr. President," he said, his eyes wide^ "the aliens
are here!" Just like that. "The aliens are here!" As if I had any idea what to do
about them.
"I see," I said. I learned early in my first term that "I see" was one of the safest
and most useful comments I could possibly make in any situation. When I said, "I
see," it indicated that I had digested the news and was waiting intelligently and
calmly for further data. That knocked the ball back into my advisers' court. I
looked at the secretary of state expectantly. I was all prepared with my next
utterance, in the event that he had nothing further to add. My next utterance would
be, "Well?" That would indicate that I was on top of the problem, but that I
couldn't be expected to make an executive decision without sufficient information,
and that he should have known better than to burst into the Oval Office unless he
had that information. That's why we had protocol; that's why we had proper
channels; that's why I had advisers. The voters out there didn't want me to make
decisions without sufficient information. If the secretary didn't have anything more
to tell me, he shouldn't have burst in in the first place. I looked at him awhile
longer. "Well?" I asked at last.
"That's about all we have at the moment," he said uncomfortably. I looked at
him sternly for a few seconds, scoring a couple of points while he stood there all
flustered. I turned back to the pelican report, dismissing him. I certainly wasn't
going to get all flustered. I could think of only one president in recent memory
who was ever flustered in office, and we all know what happened to him. As the
secretary of state closed the door to my office behind him, I smiled. The aliens
were probably going to be a bitch of a problem eventually, but it wasn't my
problem yet. I had a little time.
But I found that I couldn't really keep my mind on the pelican question. Even
the president of the United States has some imagination, and if the secretary of
state was correct, I was going to have to confront these aliens pretty damn soon.
I'd read stories about aliens when I was a kid, I'd seen all sorts of aliens in movies
and television, but these were the first aliens who'd actually stopped by for a chat.
Well, I wasn't going to be the first American president to make a fool of himself in
front of visitors from another world. I was going to be briefed. I telephoned the
secretary of defense. "We must have some contingency plans drawn up for this," I
told him. "We have plans for every other possible situation." This was true; the
Defense Department has scenarios for such bizarre events as the rise of an
imperialist fascist regime in Liechtenstein or the spontaneous depletion of all the
world's selenium.
"Just a second, Mr. President," said the secretary. I could hear him muttering to
someone else. I held the phone and stared out the window. There were crowds of
people running around hysterically out there. Probably because of the aliens. "Mr.
President?" came the voice of the secretary of defense. "I have one of the aliens
here, and he suggests that we use the same plan that President Eisenhower used."
I closed my eyes and sighed. I hated it when they said stuff like that. I wanted
information, and they told me these things knowing that I would have to ask four
or five more questions just to understand the answer to the first one. "You have an
alien with you?" I said in a pleasant enough voice.
"Yes, sir. They prefer not to be called 'aliens.' He tells me he's a 'nuhp.' "
"Thank you, Luis. Tell me, why do you have an al- Why do you have a nuhp
and I don't."
Luis muttered the question to his nuhp. "He says it's because they wanted to go
through proper channels. They learned about all that from President Eisenhower."
"Very good, Luis." This was going to take all day, I could see that; and I had a
photo session with Mick Jagger's granddaughter. "My second question, Luis, is
what the hell does he mean by 'the same plan that President Eisenhower used'?"
Another muffled consultation. "He says that this isn't the first time that the
nuhp have landed on Earth. A scout ship with two nuhp aboard landed at Edwards
Air Force Base in 1954. The two nuhp met with President Eisenhower. It was
apparently a very cordial occasion, and President Eisenhower impressed the nuhp
as a warm and sincere old gentleman. They've been planning to return to Earth
ever since, but they've been very busy, what with one thing and another. President
Eisenhower requested that the nuhp not reveal themselves to the people of Earth in
general, until our government decided how to control the inevitable hysteria. My
guess is that the government never got around to that, and when the nuhp
departed, the matter was studied and then shelved. As the years passed, few people
were even aware that the first meeting ever occurred. The nuhp have returned now
in great numbers, expecting that we'd have prepared the populace by now. It's not
their fault that we haven't. They just sort of took it for granted that they'd be
welcome."
"Uh-huh," I said. That was my usual utterance when I didn't know what the hell
else to say. "Assure them that they are, indeed, welcome. I don't suppose the study
they did during the Eisenhower administration was ever completed. I don't
suppose there really is a plan to break the news to the public."
"Unfortunately, Mr. President, that seems to be the case."
"Uh-huh." That's Republicans for you, I thought. "Ask your nuhp something for
me, Luis. Ask him if he knows what they told Eisenhower. They must be full of
outer-space wisdom. Maybe they have some ideas about how we should deal with
this."
There was yet another pause. "Mr. President, he says all they discussed with
Mr. Eisenhower was his golf game. They helped to correct his putting stroke. But
they are definitely full of wisdom. They know all sorts of things. My nuhp-that is,
his namefs Hurv-anyway, he says that they'd be happy to give you some advice."
"Tell him that I'm grateful, Luis. Can they have someone meet with me in, say,
half an hour?"
"There are three nuhp on their way to the Oval Office at this moment. One of
them is the leader of their expedition, and one of the others is the commander of
their mother ship.''
"Mother ship?" I asked.
"You haven't seen it? It's tethered on the Mall. They're real sorry about what
they did to the Washington Monument. They say they can take care of it
tomorrow."
I just shuddered and hung up the phone. I called my secretary. "There are going
to be three-"
"They're here now, Mr. President."
I sighed. "Send them in." And that's how I met the nuhp. Just as President
Eisenhower had.
They were handsome people. Likable, too. They smiled and shook hands and
suggested that photographs be taken of the historic moment, so we called in the
media; and then I had to sort of wing the most important diplomatic meeting of my
entire political career. I welcomed the nuhp to Earth. "Welcome to Earth," I said,
"and welcome to the United States."
"Thank you," said the nuhp I would come to know as Pleen. "We're glad to be
here."
"How long do you plan to be with us?" I hated myself when I said that, in front
of the Associated Press and UPI and all the network news people. I sounded like a
room clerk at a Holiday Inn.
"We don't know, exactly," said Pleen. "We don't have to be back to work until a
week from Monday."
"Uh-huh," I said. Then I just posed for pictures and kept my mouth shut. I
wasn't going to say or do another goddamn thing until my advisers showed up and
started advising.
Well, of course, the people panicked. Pleen told me to expect that, but I had
figured it out for myself. We've seen too many movies about visitors from space.
Sometimes they come with a message of peace and universal brotherhood and just
the inside information mankind has been needing for thousands of years. More
often, though, the aliens come to enslave and murder us because the visual effects
are better, and so when the nuhp arrived, everyone was all prepared to hate them.
People didn't trust their good looks. People were suspicious of their nice manners
and their quietly tasteful clothing. When the nuhp offered to solve all our
problems for us, we all said, sure, solve our problems-but at what cost?
That first week, Pleen and I spent a lot of time together, just getting to know
one another and trying to understand what the other one wanted. I invited him and
Commander Toag and the other nuhp bigwigs to a reception at the White House.
We had a church choir from Alabama singing gospel music, and a high school
band from Michigan playing a medley of favorite collegiate fight songs, and
talented clones of the original stars nostalgically re-creating the Steve and Eydie
Experience, and an improvisational comedy troupe from Los Angeles or
someplace, and the New York Philharmonic under the baton of a twelve-year-old
girl genius. They played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in an attempt to impress
the nuhp with how marvelous Earth culture was.
Pleen enjoyed it all very much. "Men are as varied in their expressions of joy as
we nuhp," he said, applauding vigorously. "We are all very fond of human music.
We think Beethoven composed some of the most beautiful melodies we've ever
heard, anywhere in our galactic travels."
I smiled. "I'm sure we are all pleased to hear that," I said.
"Although the Ninth Symphony is certainly not the best of his work."
I faltered in my clapping. "Excuse me?" I said.
Pleen gave me a gracious smile. "It is well known among us that Beethoven's
finest composition is his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major."
I let out my breath. "Of course, that's a matter of opinion. Perhaps the standards
of the nuhp-''
"Oh, no," Pleen hastened to assure me, "taste does not enter into it at all. The
Concerto No. 5 is Beethoven's best, according to very rigorous and definite critical
principles. And even that lovely piece is by no means the best music ever
produced by mankind."
I felt just a trifle annoyed. What could this nuhp, who came from some weirdo
planet God alone knows how far away, from some society with not the slightest
connection to our heritage and culture, what could this nuhp know of what
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony aroused in our human souls?
"Tell me, then, Pleen," I said in my ominously soft voice, "what is the best
human musical composition?"
"The score from the motion picture Ben-Hur, by Miklos Rozsa," he said
simply. What could I do but nod my head in silence? It wasn't worth starting an
interplanetary incident over.
So from fear our reaction to the nuhp changed to distrust. We kept waiting for
them to reveal their real selves; we waited for the pleasant masks to slip off and
show us the true nightmarish faces we all suspected lurked beneath. The nuhp did
not go home a week from Monday, after all. They liked Earth, and they liked us.
They decided to stay a little longer. We told them about ourselves and our
centuries of trouble; and they mentioned, in an offhand nuhp way, that they could
take care of a few little things, make some small adjustments, and life would be a
whole lot better for everybody on Earth. They didn't want anything in return. They
wanted to give us these things in gratitude for our hospitality: for letting them park
their mothership on the Mall and for all the free refills of coffee they were getting
all around the world. We hesitated, but our vanity and our greed won out. "Go
ahead," we said, "make our deserts bloom. Go ahead, end war and poverty and
disease. Show us twenty exciting new things to do with leftovers. Call us when
you're done."
The fear changed to distrust, but soon the distrust changed to hope. The nuhp
made the deserts bloom, all right. They asked for four months. We were perfectly
willing to let them have all the time they needed. They put a tall fence all around
the Namibia and wouldn't let anyone in to watch what they were doing. Four
months later, they had a big cocktail party and invited the whole world to see what
they'd accomplished. I sent the secretary of state as my personal representative. He
brought back some wonderful slides: the vast desert had been turned into a
botanical miracle. There were miles and miles of flowering plants now, instead of
the monotonous dead sand and gravel sea. Of course, the immense garden
contained nothing but hollyhocks, many millions of hollyhocks. I mentioned to
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分类：外语学习
价格：5.9玖币
属性：18 页
大小：55.73KB
格式：PDF
时间：2024-11-19
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