double row of tiny mirrors sewn down the front. Her hair was dyed bright blonde and cut in the sharp asymmetrical cut popularized by that Dutch on-line model, Brigitte. In the traditional Chinese courtyard, set with flowering plum trees in porcelain pots and a pool with golden carp, she looked either ridiculous or exotic, depending on your point of view. Point of view was why I was here. We hadn’t seen each other in eight years.
“Hello, Amy,” Kyra said in her low, husky voice.
“Hello, Kyra. Thank you for seeing me.”
“My pleasure.”
Was there mockery in her tone? Probably. If so, I’d earned it. “How is Aunt Julie?”
“I have no idea. She refuses to have any contact with me.”
My eyes widened; I hadn’t known that. I should have known that. A good journalist does her homework. Kyra smiled at me, and this time there was no mistaking the mockery. I had stepped in it, and oh God, I couldn’t afford to ruin this interview. My job depended on it. Staff was being cut, and Paul had not axed me only because I said, with the desperation of fear, Kyra Lunden is my cousin. I know she’s refused all other interviews, but maybe…
Kyra said, “Sit down, Amy. Shall we start? Which service do you write for, again?”
“ Times online.”
“Ah, yes. Well, what do you want to know?”
“I thought we’d start with some background. How did you and General Chou meet?”
“At a party.”
“Oh. Where was the party held?” She wasn’t going to help me at all.
Kyra crossed her legs. The expensive blue fabric of the jumpsuit draped becomingly. She looked fabulous; I wondered if she’d had any body work done. But, then, she’d always been pretty, even when she’d been ten and the most famous little girl in the world, blinking bewildered into the clunky TV equipment of sixteen years ago. My robocam drifted beside me, automatically recording us from the most flattering angles.
“The party was at Carol Perez’s,” Kyra said, naming a Washington hostess I’d only seen in the society programs. “I’d met Carol at Yale, of course. I met a lot of people at Yale.”
Yes, she did. By college, Kyra had lost her shyness about what had happened to her when we were ten. She’d developed what sounded like a superb act-we had mutual friends-composed of mystery combined with notoriety. Subtly she reminded people that she had had an experience unique to all of mankind, never duplicated since, and that although she was reluctant to talk about it, yes, it was true that she was undergoing deep hypnosis and it was possible she might remember what actually happened…
By her junior year, she’d “remembered.” Tastefully, shyly, nothing to make people label her a lunatic. The aliens were small and bipedal, they’d put a sort of helmet on her head and she’d watched holograms while, presumably, they recorded her reactions… No, she couldn’t remember any specifics. Not yet, anyway.
Yale ate it up. Intellectuals, especially political types, debated the aliens’ intentions in terms of future United States policy. Artsy preppies’ imaginations were stirred. Socialites decided that Kyra Lunden was an interesting addition to their parties. She was in.
“Carol’s party was at their Virginia home,” Kyra continued. “Diplomats, horse people, the usual. Ch’un-fu and I were introduced, and we both knew right away this could be something special.”
I peered at her. Could she really be that naive? Chou Ch’un-fu had already had two American mistresses. The Han Chinese, Chou’s party, and the United States were now allies, united in their actions against terrorists from the western part of China, the Muslim Turkic Uighurs, who were destabilizing China with their desperate war for independence. The Uighurs would lose. Everyone knew this, probably even the Uighurs. But until they did, they were blowing up things in Peking and Shanghai and San Francisco and London, sometimes in frantic negotiation for money, sometimes with arrogant political manifestos, sometimes, it seemed, out of sheer frustration. The carnage, even in a century used to it, could make a diplomat pale. General Chou was experienced in all this. Press drudges like me don’t get insider data, but rumor linked him with some brutal actions. He maintained a home in Minnesota because it was easy to reach on the rocket flights over the pole.
And Kyra believed they had a “special” romantic relationship?
Incredibly, it seemed she did. As she talked about their meeting, about her life with Chou, I saw no trace of irony, of doubt, of simple confusion. Certainly not of anything approaching shame. I did detect anger, and that was the most intriguing thing about her demeanor. Who was she angry with? Chou? Her mother, that straight-laced paragon who had rejected her? The aliens? Fate?
She deflected all political questions. “Kyra, do you approve of the way the Chinese-American alliance is developing?”
“I approve of the way my life is developing.” Tinkly laugh, undercut with anger.
We toured the villa, and she let me photograph everything, even their bedroom. Huge canopied bed, carved chests, jars of plum blossoms. Chou, or some PR spinner, had decided that a Chinese political partner should appear neither too austere nor too American. China’s past was honored in her present, even as she looked toward the future-that was clearly the message I was to get out. I recorded everything. Kyra said nothing as we toured, usually not even looking at me. She combed her hair in front of her ornate carved mirror, fiddled with objects, sat in deep reverie. It was as if she’d forgotten I was there.
Kyra’s silence broke only as she escorted me to the gate. Abruptly she said, “Amy… do you remember Carter Falls High? The V-R Gala?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“You and I and our dates were in the jungle room. There was a virtual coconut fight. I tossed a coconut at you, it hit, and you pretended you didn’t even see it.”
“Yes,” I said. Out of all the shunning I’d done to her in those horrible, terrified, cruel teenage years, she picked that to recall!
“But you did see it. You knew I was there.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Kyra.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, with such a glittering smile that all at once I knew who her anger was directed at. She had given me this interview out of old family ties, or a desire to show off the superiority of our relative positions, or something, but she was angry at me. And always would be.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, with spectacular inadequacy. Kyra didn’t answer, merely turned and walked back toward her tiny Forbidden City.
My story was a great success. The Times ran it in flat-screen, 3-D, and V-R, and its access rate went off the charts. It was the first time anyone had been inside the Chou compound, had met the American girlfriend of an enigmatic general, had seen that particular lifestyle up close. Kyra’s mysterious encounter with aliens sixteen years ago gave it a unique edge. Even those who hated the story-and there were many, calling it exploitative, immoral, decadent, symptomatic of this or that-noticed it. My message system nearly collapsed under the weight of congratulations, condemnations, job offers.
The next day, Kyra Lunden called a press conference. She denied everything. I had been admitted to the Chou villa, yes, but only as a relative, for tea. Our agreement had been no recorders. I had violated that, had recorded secretly, and furthermore had endangered Chinese-American relations. Kyra had tears in her eyes. The Chinese Embassy issued an angry denunciation. The State Department was not pleased.
The Times fired me.
Standing in my apartment, still surrounded by the masses of flowers that had arrived yesterday, I stared at nothing. The sickeningly sweet fragrances made me queasy. Wild ideas, stupid ideas, rioted in my head. I could sue. I could kill myself. Kyra really had been altered by the aliens. She was no longer human, but a V-R-thriller simulacrum of a human, and it was my duty to expose her.
All stupid. Only one idea was true.
Kyra had, after all these years, found a way to get even.
In the second year of the war, the aliens came back.
David told me while I was bathing the baby in the kitchen sink. The twins, Lucy and Lem, were shrieking around the tiny apartment like a pair of banshees. It was a crummy apartment, but it wasn’t too far from David’s job, and we were lucky to get it. There was a war on.
