They waved, stepped into the elevator, and closed the door. Though she listened carefully, she heard nothing on the roof, not even footsteps. Come to think of it, she hadn’t even heard the elevator. She opened the elevator door and found it still on her floor, but empty. It hadn’t gone anywhere. She fretted for a few moments, then went to the phone and placed the call, announcing herself as the intermediary and asking to speak to Chad Riley. Evidently the switchboard knew about her, for Mr. Riley was available at once. When she mentioned Afghanistan, he interrupted her.
“But, we’ve just learned about it.”
“About what?” she asked.
“The plague in Afghanistan. I can’t talk right now. I’ll get back to you.”
A surprising someone did get back to her: the First Lady, sounding equally baffled and very slightly amused. “Yes, Intermediary. We’re told that all the women in Afghanistan have gone bald. Overnight. Not only that . . . the women . . . they . . .”
“What!” she demanded.
“They’ve grown long noses and long chins and hairy moles. They’ve lost half their teeth. Any of them past puberty are ugly as sin, even the young ones look like the Wicked Witch of the West, or that old hag inSnow White. Each one has a tattoo on her forehead in the local dialect that says,The lustful who punish beauty would be wiser to control lust. The Afghanis are claiming we did it!”
“Of course we didn’t. The aliens did! They’ve fixed it so the Taliban won’t have any excuse for covering them in robes and veils and locking them up all the time!”
“That’s what the Secretary of State says. She says now that they’re really ugly, they can go to the market or school or leave the house and get a job. Is that why you called, Intermediary? Or was there something from you know who?”
“Am I supposed to talk on the phone?”
“They tell me it’s a secure line. The people who did up your living quarters saw to things.”
Oh, they most certainly did, Benita commented to herself before taking a deep breath and delivering the message.
Long silence. “I’ll tell . . . the president. What do you think they’re going to say on TV?”
“I haven’t even a hint, ma’am. They said I can say to you anything they said to me, but in this case they didn’t tell me what they have in mind. They did say the Old City still exists, that they’ve put it on another world . . . no, in another realm, is what they said. They said they can selectively put all the Jews or all the Palestinians in that same place, if they choose, and they hinted that the people in the Middle East can get Jerusalem back if they’ll quit killing each other.”
“It still exists?”
“They said they didn’t destroy it, just moved it. They also said to tell the president that Afghanistan is reversible, but I didn’t know what they meant until now.”
Long silence. Then the FL said, “The only thing I’m sure of at the moment is there has to be a press conference. This has gone way beyond keeping to ourselves. Even if McVane hadn’t broken security, there are too many things happening. If they’re going to broadcast on Sunday night, we have to let the public know before then. People have to know that we’re not hiding anything.”
“They also need to know you have little or no control over what’s happening,” cautioned Benita. “Otherwise, you may get blamed for it. Will the president be back in time?”
“He’ll be back late tomorrow afternoon.”
“Did the recordings come out? The ones you all made at the dinner?”
“You knew about that?”
“Well, they said so, remember? They said they’d allowed it.”
“The recordings came out. They don’t show Indira and Lara, however. They show two sort of humanoid creatures with corrugated heads and several sets of eyes. Can you explain that?”
She thought about it. “They appeared as women in saris because we could be comfortable with that. And, probably, because they’re practicing being human in order to figure us out. They wouldn’t want to stir up animosity against India, however, and being two women in saris could have done that. So, they were women in saris to us, but to the rest of the world they’ll look like something definitely extraterrestrial.”