“As previously announced, we are already studying how to remedy the problems with your schools. The causes of their failures are many, ramified, and deeply entrenched in local politics. The most amazing thing about the situation is that fifty years ago, a century ago, your schools were far better than they are now! They taught fewer subjects and taught them better, with far more success and far less jargon. Everyone agreed then that children were children, that is, impulsive, naive, and ignorant creatures in need of training. No one suggested then that schools or teachers had to put up with hostility or violence or that students had “rights” to such behavior or that freedom of speech included rudeness in the classroom. Persons could be expelled from school and sometimes were. Children were expected to be good citizens and mannerly, and the schools taught citizenship and manners. A necessary adjunct to the school was the truant officer, who sought out and detained any child under eighteen who was not in school, and children did not get out of school until they could read and write and do arithmetic. As is true on so many worlds, the theoreticians and politicians have ruined a good thing. It is likely our interventions will simply roll back time.
“Though we choose to do nothing about drug addiction, we do choose to do something about the violence, theft, and destruction of neighborhoods that accompanies the drug problem, and you may already have heard about our efforts in one such particular area in California. Your news media have been kind enough to carry the details of that action, and the supplies requested by law enforcement agencies in other states are already being shipped.”
When the program was over, Benita took Sasquatch up to her favorite thinking place, the roof. The weather had stayed so warm that the plants under the arbor had grown a third of the way up the trellis, and there were many little green worms turning up the soil, probably making fertilizer like crazy. Benita could not recall ever seeing green worms before, but then, the world had a lot of creatures she’d never seen before, all gyring and gimballing on the wabe, a whole foment of them.
Which is what the ET’s were doing, and what the world was undergoing. “Chiddy,” she said to the sky, pleadingly. “Please.”
The plea went unheeded, as had those before.
There was much news in the Sunday papers. The quadriplegic boy in Arkansas appeared on television, walking on crutches, but definitely walking. He thanked the envoys for his miraculous recovery. The murderer of the woman in Seattle turned himself in to police, refused counsel, and pled guilty, saying a voice in his mind had told him to do so. While he was at it, he said, he’d like to also confess to thirteen other murders he had committed in Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona.
The militia in Texas that had cooperated in the slaying of the three African-Americans turned itself in also, all eleven members. Eight confessed to conspiracy. Five confessed to aiding and abetting. All eleven confessed to illegal firearms possession, and four of them said they’d done the actual killing. Meantime, there were follow-up stories on the drug pushers who had ruled the territory outside the Morningside Project, all of them caught in the act of dealing drugs, acts documented right down to the quantities and amounts of money and persons present. All had been impeccably Mirandized on tape and were currently incarcerated awaiting trial. Law enforcement in sixteen other states had requested causeometers, and some had already received them.
Newspaper and TV polls taken during the week gave the ET’s a seventy percent approval rating by all races, ages, sexes, and all professions except attorneys and conservative religious organizations, both of whom felt the ET’s were invading their territory.
On Sunday, Benita got a phone call from the First Lady. “The president wants me to touch base with you. Do you mind?”
“Why?”
“He wants me to know how you’re holding up, and whether you need any help. There’s something happening on the Hill. Not just the usual extravagant egos. The president doesn’t know where you are and he doesn’t want to know, because there’s a push for congressional hearings about the ET’s. They’re charging that the president knows more than he’s telling, and they’re looking for any excuse to accuse him of something. If I stay in touch, he can honestly say he hasn’t spoken with you. Do you speak French, by any chance?”