Yesterday's Kin Read Free

here?
    To make contact with humanity. A peace mission.
    A musician set the repeated phrases to music, a sly and humorous refrain, without menace. The song, an instant international sensation, was the opening for playfulness about the aliens. Late-night comics built monologues around supposed alien practices. The Embassy became a tourist attraction, viewed through telescopes, from boats outside the Coast Guard limit, from helicopters outside the no-fly zone. A German fashion designer scored an enormous runway hit with “the Deneb look,” despite the fact that no one knew how the Denebs looked. The stock market stabilized as much as it ever did. Quickie movies were shot, some with Deneb allies and some with treacherous Deneb foes who wanted our women or gold or bombs. Bumper stickers proliferated like kudzu: I BRAKE FOR DENEBS. EARTH IS FULL ALREADY—GO HOME. DENEBS DO IT INVISIBLY. WILL TRADE PHYSICS FOR FOOD.
    The aliens never commented on any of it. They published the promised physics, which only a few dozen people in the world could understand. They were courteous, repetitive, elusive. Why are you here? To make contact with humanity. A peace mission.
    Marianne stared at the TV, where CNN showed footage of disabled children choosing Halloween costumes. Nothing about the discussion, the room, the situation felt real. Why would the aliens want to talk to her? It had to be about her paper, nothing else made sense. No, that didn’t make sense either.
    “—donated by a network of churches from five states. Four-year-old Amy seizes eagerly on the black-cat costume, while her friend Kayla chooses—”
    Her paper was one of dozens published every year on evolutionary genetics, each paper adding another tiny increment to statistical data on the subject. Why this one? Why her? The UN Secretary-General, various presidents and premiers, top scientists—the press said they all talked to the Denebs from this modern fortress, through (pick one) highly encrypted devices that permitted no visuals, or one-way visuals, or two-way visuals that the UN was keeping secret, or not at all and the whole alien-human conversation was invented. The Embassy , however, was certainly real. Images of it appeared on magazine covers, coffee mugs, screen savers, tee shirts, paintings on velvet, targets for shooting ranges.
    Marianne’s daughter Elizabeth regarded the aliens with suspicion, but then, Elizabeth regarded everyone with suspicion. It was one reason she was the youngest Border Patrol section leader in the country, serving on the New York Task Force along with several other agencies. She fit right in with the current American obsession with isolationism as an economic survival strategy.
    Ryan seldom mentioned the aliens. He was too absorbed in his career and his wife.
    And Noah—did Noah, her problem child, even realize the aliens were here? Marianne hadn’t seen Noah in months. In the spring he had gone to “try life in the South.” An occasional e-mail turned up on her phone, never containing much actual information. If Noah was back in New York, he hadn’t called her yet. Marianne didn’t want to admit what a relief that was. Her child, her baby—but every time they saw each other, it ended in recriminations or tears.
    And what was she doing, thinking about her children instead of the aliens? Why did the ambassador want to talk to her? Why were the Denebs here?
    To make contact with humanity. A peace mission. . . .
    “Dr. Jenner?”
    “Yes.” She stood up from her chair, her jaw set. Somebody better give her some answers, now.
    The young man looked doubtfully at her clothes, dark jeans and a green suede blazer ten years old, her standard outfit for faculty parties. He said, “Secretary Desai will join you shortly.”
    Marianne tried to let her face show nothing. A few moments later Vihaan Desai, Secretary-General of the United Nations, entered the room, followed by a security detail. Tall, elderly, he wore a sky-blue kurta of