Invaders

Invaders

By John Kessel

It was Colonel Zipp’s third session interrogation the alien. So far the thing had kept a consistent story, but not a credible one. The only thing that kept Zipp from panic at the thought of how his career would suffer if this continues was the rumor that his fellow case officers weren’t doing any better with any of the others. That, and the fact the Krel possessed technology that would re-establish American superiority for another two hundred years. He took a drag on his cigarette, the first of his third pack on the day.

“Your name?” Zipp asked.

“You may call me Flash.”

Zipp studied the red union suit, the lightning bolt. With the flat chest, the rounded shoulders, pointed upper lip, and pronounced underbite, the alien looked like a cross between Wally Cleaver and the Mock Turtle. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“What is a joke?”

“Never mind.” Zipp consulted his notes. “Where are you from?”

“God has ceded un an empire extending over sixteen solar systems in the Orion arm of the galaxy, including the systems around the stars you know as Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, Alpha Centauri, and the red dwarf Barnard’s Star.”

Invaders. Photo by Elena

“God gave you an empire?”

“Yes. We were hoping he’d give us your world, but all he kept talking about was your cocaine.”

The alien’s translating device had to be malfunctioning. “You’re telling me that God sent you for cocaine?”

“No, He just told us about it. We collect chemical compounds for their aesthetic interest. These alkaloids do not exist on our world. Like the music you humans value so highly, they combine familiar elements – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen – in pleasing new ways.”

The colonel leaned back, exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You consider cocaine like – like a symphony?”

“Yes. Understand, Colonel, no material commodity alone could justify the difficulties of interstellar travel. We come here for aesthetic reasons.”

“You seem to know what cocaine is already. Why don’t you just synthesize it yourself?”

“If you valued a unique work of aboriginal art, would you be satisfied with a mass-produced duplicate manufactured in your hometown? Of course not. And we are prepared to pay you well, in a coin you can use.”

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)