The Grays

was there, and not but a few feet overhead, he could not see it.

As it departed, he felt the brief wash of one of its altitude control fans.

He crossed the field, then walked into the lobby of the Days Inn.

“Hey,” he said to the sleepy clerk, “got a room?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said, coming out of the tiny office where he had been watching TV. Mike had a dozen false identities to choose from. He checked in under the name of Harold A. Hill, salesman. It was one of his favorites, because nobody ever wants to talk to a salesman.

He went through the lobby and crossed a bleak courtyard to his room. He entered it, turned on the light, and used the bathroom. Naked now, he slipped into the bed.

Tomorrow morning, he would scout the town for a Radio Shack. To complete his mission, he needed a few commonly available items. He lay down and closed his eyes. He was deeply tired. Deeply, deeply tired. Curse Lauren and Andy, who were both out there in the wind doing God knew what. The grays were on the warpath and extremely dangerous.

He wished he was a damn fool salesman.

PART SIX Child of Hallows

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come…

—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

“Ode on Intimations of Immortality Recollected from Early Childhood”

SEVENTEEN

CONNER HAD WAITED ON THE steps for Paulie to leave school. Usually, they would be carpooled home by Mom or Maggie, but that had obviously ended.

The thing was that Paulie, leader of the Connerbusters though he was, also remained the only real friend he’d ever had. He had to reach him somehow, and he thought that the way to do it was still through the idea of the aliens, despite what had happened. If they were real, then maybe he could contact them somehow and get them to come back, with Paulie as a witness.

It was an audacious, insane idea, but there were more than a few Web sites out there put up by folks who were doing just that, and posting video of the UFOs that had turned up. He’d communicated with one or two of them and gotten detailed instructions about how to do it using, as one of them had put it, “a flashlight, patience, and a serious interest in meeting them.”

All day at school, he had kept to himself. There was nothing else he could do, not without triggering some sort of additional humiliation. As it was, everybody had gotten up from the table and moved when he sat down for lunch. He had eaten alone, ostentatiously and purposely reading a book none of them could begin to understand, Physics from Fisher Information, a rather basic text, actually.

He had considered going the total eccentric route, perhaps refusing to speak anything except Latin and dying his hair purple or something. But that would just justify his isolation, and he did not really want to be isolated. Faint though it might be, there remained the possibility that some girl might some day do just slightly more than run screaming when he drew near. Amy, for example. After all, they had an embarrassing past in the woods, did they not? It had, when he was ten and she was eleven, involved the revelation of body parts, back where the little stream flowed and the bluebells nodded along its banks.

He had been thinking fairly carefully this past couple of days about what actually had happened the other night. What did the Keltons’ video really show? The answer to that question, he thought, might be far less obvious than it seemed.

It was possible that the legendary grays of Internet fame actually were involved, but only very remotely.

Although the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence people claimed that the chances of finding a signal from another world was vanishingly small, that was incorrect. They were actually pretty good—about 0.4 percent a year.

He thought that, if somebody actually had appeared here from another planet, they must be desperate. It would take vast resources to cross interstellar space, and huge amounts of time. Wormholes and such were science fiction. The reason was simple: it was theoretically possible to bend space until two distant points touched, but the amount of energy necessary was unimaginable. To bend the United States until, say, Phoenix and Buffalo touched, would be child’s play by comparison. Faster-than-light transmission of signals was indirectly possible using quantum-entangled particles, but the movement of structured physical objects at hyper speeds was out of the question.

So, if they were here, they had come at less than light speed, probably far less, and thus even a journey from Centauri A, the closest sun-like star, would have taken many years. Internet scuttlebut had the grays coming from Zeta Reticuli, a double star. Such a situation would make for planets with lots of seasons and some really eccentric orbits, but it wasn’t completely impossible.

All of these thoughts danced in his mind even while, at another level, he considered his father’s straightforward advice to confront the kids who were tormenting him. Dad was no genius, but his advice could be relied on, and Conner intended to take it.

“Paulie,” he said as he came down the steps, “hey.”

“Hey, Conner.”

“Would you like to come over?”

Paulie stopped. He stared at him like he was some kind of bizarre animal. He was flanked by two of his most unpleasant new friends, Kevin Sears and Will Heckle. “ ’Course not,” he said.

“The video’s real, Paulie. We all ought to respect what it means. The event happened.”

“I wasn’t there, Conner, I didn’t see it.”

Conner was pleased to hear the anger and disappointment in his voice. This was precisely what he had expected. He had taken Paulie exactly where he wanted him to go, and now he would win him back. “You know I can fix things,” he said. “Maybe I can fix that.”

“How? Build a time machine?”

“What if I could get them to come back?”

Will Heckle burst out laughing. A smiling Kevin shook his head.

“No, wait,” Paulie said. “I want to hear this.”

“I can call them,” Conner said, “with you as a witness.”

The boys were not laughing now.

“If I do it, then will you agree to cancel the Connerbusters?”