Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed and the others didn’t wait for another reply from the denizens of the third planet before flashing a series of additional pictures at them. These were standard images, already prepared, showing details of physiology at a much higher resolution than that used for the earlier message. The aliens, after all, had seemed willing to reveal their own body form—or forms, given the two lifestages depicted in their first missive. Perhaps they would respond with more details about their own kind.

And then they could determine whether these people and the members of would be able to share a world together.

* * *

“They’re not at Groombridge 1618,” Darren said to Mayor Rivers, when His Honor arrived shortly after midnight; the mayors toupee had been hastily perched and now sat somewhat askew atop his head. “They can’t be. Assuming they responded immediately upon receipt of our message, they’re only a few light-hours away—about the distance Pluto is from the Earth, although, of course, they’re well above the plane of the solar system.” Darren frowned. “They must be in a spaceship, but … but, no, no, that can’t be right. Every observatory on Earth has been taking the spectra of the laser flashes, and they’re dead on the D, sodium line, which can’t be a coincidence. The senders are using a line that’s weak in their home star but very strong in our own sun’s spectrum to signal us. But, like I said, it’s dead on that line, meaning there’s no Doppler shift. But if the ship was coming towards us, the light from the laser would be blue-shiked, and—”

“And if it were a-flyin’ away from us,” said Mayor Rivers, “it would be red-shifted.”

Darren looked at His Honor, surprised. Rivers lifted his shoulders a bit. “Hey, we’re not all hicks down here, you know.”

Darren smiled. “But if the light isn’t undergoing a Doppler shift, then—”

“Then,” said Rivers, “the starship must be holdin’ station, somewhere out there near the edge of the solar system.”

Darren nodded. “I wonder why they don’t come closer?”

* * *

The next night, Darren found himself flipping channels in his hotel room—they’d put him back in the Hilton. Letterman did a top-ten list of people who would make the best ambassadors to visit the aliens (“Number four: Robert Downey, Jr., because he’s been damn near that high already”). And Leno did a “Jay Walking” segment, asking people on the street basic questions about space; Darren was appalled that one person said the sun revolved around the Earth, and that another declared that Mars was “millions of light-years” away.

After that, though, he switched to Nightline, which had some more-serious discussion of the aliens. Ted Koppel was interviewing a guy named Quentin Fawcett, who was billed as an “astrobiologist.”

“I’ve been studying the anatomical charts that the Tailiens sent us,” said Fawcett, whose long hair was tied into a ponytail. “I think I’ve figured out why they don’t use radio.”

Koppel played the stooge well. “You figured that out from anatomical charts? What’s anatomy got to do with it?”

“Can we have the first slide?” asked Fawcett. A graphic appeared on the monitor between Koppel and Fawcett, and, a second later, the image on Hamasaki’s hotel-room TV filled with the same image, as the director cut to it. “Look at this,” said Fawcett’s voice.

“That’s the one they’re calling three-dash-eleven, isn’t it ?” said Koppel. “The eleventh picture from the third group of signals the Tailiens sent.”

“That’s right. Now, what do you see?”

The TV image changed back to a two-shot of Koppel and Fawcett, both looking at their own monitor. “It’s the Tailien head,” said Koppel. And indeed it was, drawn out like an alligator’s.

“Look carefully at the mouth,” said Fawcett.

Koppel shook his head. “I’m sorry; I’m not getting it.”

“That’s not a picture of the head, you know. It’s a picture of the Tailien cranium—the skull.”

“Yes?”

“It’s all one bone,” said Fawcett triumphantly. “There’s no separate mandible, no movable jaw. The mouth is just a boomerang-shaped opening in a solid head.”

Koppel frowned. “So you’re saying they couldn’t articulate? I guess it would be hard to talk without a hinged jaw.” He nodded. “No talking, no radio.”

“No, it’s not the ability to make sounds that depends on the advent of jaws. It’s the ability to hear sounds, or, at least, to hear them clearly and distinctly.”