Little Green Men (4 page)

Finally there were the usual number of letters from prisoners, many with death-row return addresses, proclaiming their innocence and requesting Banion's championship of their appeal. It is the dream of most journalists, and the stuff of Jimmy Stewart movies, to free an unjustly accused man from death row. This fantasy had never tantalized
John O
. Banion. No cream puff he, when it came to capital punishment. Indeed, he had attended a number of executions and written approvingly about them in his column - except in the unfortunate case when the man exploded in the electric chair. Dreadful business. He had written forcefully about the incident in his column, denouncing the competence of the prison, saying that any nation that could put a man on the moon ought to be able to devise a decent method of frying its felons. And now Ample Ampere, his own sponsor, had taken up the challenge and was about to unveil its new electric chair. Quiet, smokeless, efficient, energy-saving.

This Monday. Renira reported that it was a moderately busy week, schedule-wise. ("Shed-yule," she pronounced it.) Breakfast Tuesday with Assistant Defense Secretary Coyne to discuss the Russian situation; lunch Wednesday with Kurt Kendall to hear him out - yet again - on why the Fed's tight money policies were throttling the economy; breakfast Thursday with Elkan Bingmutter of the Pan-European Union, who was agitating to come on
Sunday
so that he could explain to the American people the urgency of including Albania in NATO; lunch speech Thursday to the American Association of Frozen Fish Producers. Renira reminded him that this might be a bit dicey, as Banion had written a column just last month taking Canada's side in the recent halibut skirmish off Georges Bank, and the AAFFP was
vehemently
anti-Canadian. Banion shrugged. Dinner speech same day to the Congress of Jewish Chairmen of the Board of Extremely Successful Corporations. Might have to buff up his Middle East peace process speech for this one, in light of the fact that two weeks ago Israel had annexed Jordan, on the grounds that a scholar had interpreted a vowel in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls to mean that Jordan h
ad once been part of Israel. Um
. Tricky. Perhaps something along the lines that this, finally, represented
real
stability in the region. Or something like that. Friday morning he was moderating a panel discussion for the American Medical Association. Sid Mint had squeezed $35,000 out of them for this. What was the topic?

"Perspectives in Diminished Longevity," Renira read off Mint's briefing sheet. "Challenges and Opportunities."

Renira's assistant buzzed to say that Bill Stimple of Ample Ampere was on the line. Banion took the call.

"Jack!" Bill Stimple was the Ur-corporate relations man. Each greeting began with an exclamation mark. When the Grim Reaper came for Bill, he'd probably bray, "Death!" and ask how his golf game was coming.

Banion did not go in for the hearty salutation. The last time he had raised his voice was in college, when some football players threw him into a box hedge after he wrote an editorial for
The Daily Princetonian
denouncing sports as a "colossal waste of time and energy." "Hello, Bill."

"Great
show. Boy, you really held his toes to the fire." "Glad you liked it."

"One of your best." Bill laughed. "Don't know how you're going to get him back on, but great job. Really, really great."

"I wouldn't worry. If his numbers are any indication, we may have a new president in January."

"Say, jack, I spoke with Al Wiley after the show. By the way, he said to tell you how much he loved the show. Anyway, about
Celeste.
I don't think I need to tell you how much we respect your integrity. In fact, we worship your integrity."

Banion's chair made a leathery squeak as he leaned back. He imagined Al Wiley, chairman of the board of Ample Ampere, down on his knees, with Bill Stimple, worshiping at the altar of Banion's integrity.

"Ample's not a big
Celeste
contractor, not if you compare it with, say, Groening or Aeromax. But we do have a pinkie in the pie, so to speak. And this launch is going to be, you know, a
major
event."

"Bill -"

"Hear me out, then I'll shut up. I'm not saying there haven't been cost overruns - but Ample's been on budget and on time. I'm not saying - look, Jack, between you, me, and the walls, I couldn't tell you if this thing is worth twenty-one billion or twenty-one bucks. Not my department. What I do know is that this launch is going to be the biggest thing since
Apollo 11,
and Al is kind of wondering if we ought to be, I don't know . . . pissing all over it."

"I'm not 'pissing' on it, Bill. I'm asking certain basic questions, like is he using a massive amount of public money as a campaign donation, and are they manipulating the launch date to coincide with the election, and is this thing necessary?"

"Not my department. You're the man. I just wanted you to know what the big guy was thinking. I figured you'd want to know. Right?" "Of course."

"He
loves
the show. He's always bragging on you. The other day he was playing golf with Kenzibura Motohama, and he was going on and on about it."

"That's good to hear," said Banion, yearning to be off the phone.

"What else was I calling about? Jesus, early-onset Alzheimer's . . . Oh, right, you know we're rolling out the XT-2000 this fall at the Florida penitentiary in Starke. The governor's coming. Wondered if you wanted to be there. It was your column about the guy who caught fire that got us started on this.
What
a great column. I
still have that somewhere."

"I don't do openings, Bill."

"I
totally understand."

"You're going down for it?"

"Sure. It's a new product launch. A lot of other state death reps are going to be there. You know, it
reclines!
You're not sitting there bolt upright. Just like being at home watching football, only you're being electrocuted. Very humane. And
quiet.
It makes less noise than our electric shavers."

"You should include it in your next commercial. Instead of the basset hound looking at the roast in the oven, he's watching Master being electrocuted."

"I like it! I'll run it by Creative."

Banion summoned Renira back in. "Where were we?"

'AMA panel Friday."

"Managed death. This entire
week
is managed death," he said crossly. "This was going to be the week I got started on the book. Don Morforken called last week to say they've scheduled the pub date." He looked at her sternly, as if it was all her fault. "If there's no book, there is no point in
having
a publication date."

Banion no l
onger had time to write the big
meaty policy books that he had cranked out in his younger days, books like
Pig's Breakfast: The Failure of U.S. Foreign Policy
from Cuba to Beirut
or
Colossi of Rhodes,
his admiring study of Rhodes scholars and "The World They Made"; or
Screwing the Poor,
his controversial best-seller on welfare reform. Between the TV show, his thrice-weekly column, the speeches, he simply couldn't get around to doing the longer books. Now he inclined to every publisher's nightmare: the collection, of past columns, magazine articles, even old speeches. To keep Morforken happy he tossed him an original book every now and then, usually short, historical works, the research for which was provided by some impoverished Georgetown University graduate student. The one he was working on now - that is,
trying
to work on - involved Benjamin Franklin. Its thesis was that during his stay in Paris as American agent during the Revolution, Franklin had befriended the young Maximilien Robespierre in a brothel and urged him to start his own revolution someday. The evidence was a bit sketchy, but it was a lovely premise. The working title was
Seed of Revolution.

"I spoke with your graduate student this morning," said Renira, "and she's coming in this afternoon with more research. You'll notice you have
all
your afternoons and most evenings free this week just to work on the book. As for guarding your privacy, Conrad Black's office called this morning asking if you could fly up to meet with him and Mrs. Thatcher tomorrow afternoon, and 1 told them no."

Banion said, aghast, "You told Conrad I couldn't come up for a meeting with Mrs. Thatcher?"

"You're spending weekend after next with them at the Hollinger thrash in London, so 1 hardly saw why you needed to gallivant up to New York for this. But if you want, I'll call them and say you
can
make it."

No wonder the British once ruled the world. "No. All right.
Fine."

"Then shall we discuss Saturday?"

"Yes."

"Bitsey says she's got to spend the morning with her symphony committee. You've got a three o'clock tee time at Burning Bush with Justice Fitch and Speaker Meeker. I thought you might want to get out there a bit early and have a few practice whacks, so I've reserved tee time for just yourself at one o'clock. Now, while you were on the phone with Mr. Stimple, Mr. Mint called with another date. American Free-Ranging Poultry Farmers. He says they're rather lefty."

"Left-wing chicken farmers?"

"Urn. Very progressive. No force feeding, pesticides, any of that. You let them wander about to their hearts' content. Personally, 1 find them tough as nails. Give me an oppressed, caged chicken any day. It's in November, so Sid said you could just give them your postelection analysis off the top of your head. He said
if
you could possibly fit something in somewhere about how we ought to be making western cattlemen pay more for grazing on federal lands, that they'd probably carry you out on their shoulders."

"How much?"

"Twenty-five."

"Tell him thirty. Say we'll have to scramble to fit it in." What did it work out to? Almost a thousand dollars a minute? Nice work, if you could get it, and you could get it if you tried.

FOUR

Nathan Scrubbs sat in his office deep in the rheumatic bowels of the Social Security Administration building in Washington, D.C., listlessly reading a Tom Clancy novel while waiting for his computer to advise him that somewhere in Indiana another housewife had been abducted and sexually probed by aliens in a flying saucer. Scrubbs wanted out of Abductions.

They were interesting the first dozen times. Af
ter that, it was just a job. He’
d been doing them for over two years now, and he was burned out. He'd applied months ago for a transfer to Operations, where he might get a shot at flying the really ass-kicking new aircraft. It would happen. He was sure of it. He'd turned in excellent work. One of his women, Kathy Carr, had turned her abduction into a brilliant new career. She was going to be the featured speaker at this year's Congress of Alien Abductees. Her book,
Space Rape,
was a huge best-seller, and there was a TV movie-of-the-week deal in the works with Gwen Dale playing Kathy. Size-four Gwen Dale, playing size-fourteen Kathy Carr. There was Hollywood for you. Yes, his application for transfer should be gliding smoothly to approval just about now.

He was in his midthirties, tall, still basically lean, though the strain of his subterranean life - and perhaps a drink or two too many at night to banish the ennui - was beginning to take its toll. Still, he was an attractive enough fellow. His chin had the determined jut of a soldier's.

but it was undercut by an antic, raccoonlike scheming look in his eyes, which overall gave him the air of someone who just missed being one of life's winners. If this feckless air weren't so transparent, he might have looked sinister. As it was, he was the sort of person one would confidently ask to watch one's bag in an airport while one used the bathroom.

Scrubbs checked his watch. They were running late. Maybe she'd put up a struggle. That could slow things down. He called up the abductee profile on the computer:

MURCH, MARGARET, 38 YEARS OLD, 5 FT 4 INCHES, 195 POUNDS. CHILDREN, THREE. HUSBAND: HENRY. POULTRY FARMER. ADDRESS RURAL ROUTE I, HINK, INDIANA. CRED. RATING 2.

Scrubbs studied the chubby face before him on the screen. Another Miss America. It had been taken at the supermarket. She was wheeling a shopping cart that contained enough sucrose to sweeten the whole country's coffee for a week. The little black eyes peeked out from behind the cheeks. Poor thing. Probably didn't get much in the way of servicing from old Henry. There was one of her brood, lumbering along behind her, eating a - Jesus - was that a
raw
hot dog? Scrubbs shuddered.

"Hope it was good for you, too, Maggie," he muttered, clicking off her window and returning to Clancy, who was describing some laser weapon designed to cook an enemy's optic nerve. The boys in Mutilations used those laser guns, too. You could crank them up to full. Now
there
was a nasty job. At least he wasn't coring out cow assholes and tongues and other bovine organs in order to make people think that aliens had bizarre food cravings. Who the hell had thought
that
up? They had some sick minds in Policy and Planning. MJ-12 was one strange Skunk Works.