Parade Coverage
Chapter 4
“Well, that’s it,” Susan told the two broadcasters. “L.A.’s taken over, and we are officially off the air.” Susan was the producer, a woman with brown hair and a neat powder blue blouse and skirt.
Amy Peters responded to this news by unclipping her microphone and walking over to her. “Do you have any more portable mics?” she asked.
Susan turned around and grabbed the microphone which the cameraman handed her and passed it over. “What do you have in mind?” she asked.
She pointed down at the stalled float and the museum behind it. “If that is what we all think it is,” Amy said, “then this is the biggest story of all time, and I want in on it.”
“Um, did you hear what Susan just said?” asked an incredulous Goodchild.
“Yes, and they are a bunch of idiots for doing it,” Amy said. She sat down on a nearby bench to swap her pumps for a pair of sneakers. “This is not like the stories the networks and cable channels are used to covering,” she told them. “They think they can get away with looping whatever footage they can scrounge from the Net and bringing in a round table of experts. Well the only coverage they have is thirty seconds of those things appearing and running away, repeated from the angle of every spectator with a cell phone camera.
“And what experts are they going to call? U.F.O. cranks? Horse breeders? Star Trek experts to tell us all about how fictional transporter beams are supposed to work? They are all going to look like morons.” Amy shook her head. “Sooner or later they’ll realize that there is one way and one way only to tell this story: put a microphone in the face of these visitors, and let them say whatever it is they came to this planet to say. And I’d like a shot at being the hand holding that mic.”
“All right,” Susan said. “I’ll tape everything you send me, audio, video or both. I hope you’re right.”
“And I hope they didn’t come down here to deliver an ultimatum!” Goodchild whined.
“Really, Robert,” Amy joked. “If they were going to blow up the planet, I think they would have sent down the spokespeople that looked like slugs or lizards instead of the ones that look like ponies. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck!” Susan called out to Amy she speed-walked her way down the metal stairway of the bandstand.
Ms. Peters found Edie Conday and her cameraman sitting glumly on the bottom seat of the bandstand.
“So, Edie,” Amy asked. “I was going to go interview the aliens. Wanna come with?”
“I can’t, Ms. Peters,” Edie said with a whimper.
“Why not?” Amy asked, putting a hand on their shoulder. “They looked very approachable.”
“They looked like horses,” Edie explained, looking away. “I tend to get a little obsessive around horses.”
“I noticed,” said Amy, recalling all the times during the broadcast she and Robert had been forced to shut Edie up when she talked about the equestrian groups at the expense of the floats and bands the viewers actually wanted to see. “I consider that a good thing under the circumstances.”
“No, I mean I’m really obsessed with horses,” Edie insisted. “I took French in high school not because I wanted to visit Paris, but because I wanted to visit the Musée Vivant du Cheval in Chantilly. Um, that’s French for ‘The Living Museum of the Horse’. I’ve been there seven times so far! If I tried to have a serious discussion with one of those aliens, I’d probably end up trying to brush them or something.”
Amy grinned. “Brush my horsey, brush my horsey, ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh-ah!” she warbled off key.
“Hey, don’t make fun of Brush My Horsey,” Edie said with a grin. “I must have bought every last one of those toys, even the factory rejects they passed off as ‘Space Ponies’ in 1987. In fact...they kinda look like Space Ponies!”
“I’ll be sure to bring that up during the interview,” Amy said in deadpan.
“No! Go...go knock yourself out. I’ll stay here in the stands.”
Amy sighed. “Well, alright,” she said reluctantly. Turning to the cameraman, she asked, “So, by any chance would y—?”
“I’m in,” said the cameraman at that moment, jumping to his feet and holding out his hand. “Brock Condor. Would you like me to film an introduction, or an eyewitness interview, or—”
“Introductions are a waste of time,” Amy said, taking her own turn at interrupting. “At least, I tend to think so when I’m watching the news instead of covering it. Nice to meet you, Brock. As for the eyewitnesses...” She then gestured to a couple of reporters and their camerapeople, who were talking to people standing on the sidewalk. “I think those folks have got that covered, and besides, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
She carefully surveyed the cordon of police officers that had formed in front of the Norton Simon Museum, until she identified the man in charge and grinned in recognition. She then turned back to Brock with an expression of seriousness. “Look, I believe that you should never turn on the camera until you’ve got something worthwhile to say,” she told him. “The folks who get there first to cover breaking news may get the ratings, but it’s the ones who can take that news and turn it into something that make a difference.” She pointed across the street. “I’m going to go over there and lay some groundwork. What I’d like you to do is talk to some of the people around here. Without the camera, I think they’ll be more likely to say what they think instead of what they think you want them to say. See who has some useful theories, the kind that can actually be tested. I’m not interested in the crazies—let our competitors have them. Think you can do that?”
Brock blinked. He hadn’t exactly gotten a job behind the camera because he liked talking to people he didn’t know. “I...guess I can.”
“I can help with that,” Edie volunteered. “These folks know me.”
“OK,” Amy said, handing her microphone over to Brock to carry.
“I’ve got the answer to all of your problems, Bub,” the man in the trench coat said to Pasadena Police Captain Fenwick, patting the large green cylinder beside him. “I’ve got enough chloroform here to knock out a herd of elephants—and half the people on this block, but they’re just collateral damage. Let me do my thing, and the Gov’mint will take these babies right off of your hands.”
Captain Fenwick’s face had been contorting up into a look of greater and greater disbelief as he heard this man’s spiel for the past five minutes but this was more than he could stand. “I don’t know who the hell you’re working for, but it damn well isn’t the ‘Gov’mint’,” he said, his voice gaining volume with every word. He pointed imperiously down the street. “Now get out of my face and climb back into whatever 90’s second-rate conspiracy thriller you crawled out of!”
As the man slunk away, the Captain’s eyes caught on the woman who was standing behind him the whole time.
“Billy!” Amy called out, her arms wide. “Remember me?”
William Fenwick rolled his eyes. “Yes, I remember you,” he said calmly. “Ninth grade homeroom, middle row.”
He pointedly didn’t acknowledge the hug invitation, causing Ms. Peters to slowly lower her arms. “Anything I can do to help?” she finally asked.
“Are you asking me as a concerned citizen, or as a reporter out for a scoop?” Fenwick asked acidly.
“To be perfectly honest, B first, then A,” Amy replied, still trying to keep a friendly grin on her face.
“God, another walking stereotype,” Fenwick grumbled. “Which movie did you walk out of? Die Hard?
Amy dropped the grin. “Now listen here—” she began.
“No, you listen here!” Fenwick bellowed. “I’ve had three of you idiots interview me so far, prodding me to ‘spontaneously’ say the sound bites you want to lead the next hour’s broadcast with: ‘We do not know if they come in peace or war’, or ‘This looks like something straight out of Star Trek’. Well unlike you yahoos, I actually watched Star Trek as a kid.” By now he was in full-on lecture mode: “That show had a lot to say about the situation we are in right now. This here is a ‘first contact’ scenario. What we do or don’t do today is going to shape the course of human history for centuries. And I damn well am not going down in the textbooks on the list of guys who screwed this up! My men and women are going to stand here, and keep the likes of you away from them, and there’s not a thing you can do to stop us.”
“Are you finished?” Amy asked dryly.
Fenwick frowned. “Yes,” he said reluctantly.
“Do you see a camera? Do you see a microphone?” Amy whirled around so that the police officer could see that she had no hidden equipment or battery pack hidden on her.
“...No,” the Captain replied, in a tone that made it clear that he still distrusted her.
“Now let me make you aware of a contrasting point of view,” Amy said calmly. “Right now, there are several million people who just saw aliens land on this planet. They are being whipped up into a frenzy by a media machine that has been trained for decades to do precisely this with every crisis that comes their way. Humanity may have been willing to embrace these visitors when they first arrived. But in another hour or two, their curiosity will change to fear, and that will change to hate, and then the precise thing you do not want to happen will happen. All because of a lack of information.”
The reporter pointed past the policeman at the museum behind him, and the aliens who were hiding behind it. “I don’t want to hound them. I don’t want to hunt them. I just want to help my viewers to understand them.” Amy looked pleadingly at her former classmate.
Captain Fenwick thought for a few moments, slowly rubbing his chin with one hand. “Yeah, alright,” he said reluctantly. “You can stay here. Whenever the visitors decide to come out, I’ll give you your chance to talk to them. But no bugging them—or me—on camera before then.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” the reporter said sweetly. “I’ve got an interview or two to get to, and then I’ll be back.”
“...Now if you look at this still,” Brian Fellows informed the cameraman sitting beside him, “you can see that each of them has some kind of mark on their...what was that word you used, Miss Conday?”
“‘Flank’,” Edie, who was sitting next to him, replied. “On a horse, that would be their flank.”
“Right, these ‘flank symbols’, as I guess you’d call them, are different on each one,” Brian continued, working the touchpad on his laptop to page between Flickr and YouTube, where the number of photo collections and videos devoted to the visitors' brief appearance already numbered in the hundreds. “This is a complete shot in the dark, but what if those symbols describe their jobs?”
“Or their names,” suggested Frank, like Brian a student at the local community college. He was sitting on the other side of Brian from the reporter.
“You’re telling me that an advanced alien civilization sent down a representative with the name of ‘Balloons’?” Brian asked skeptically, pointing to a somewhat blurry screenshot.
“Well, better to be named ‘Balloons’ than to be called ‘Kar-Raisa, the Amazing Balloon-Trick Alien’!” muttered Frank under his breath.
“Say, I’m sorry to interrupt,” asked a raspy voice from the next-higher row, “but aren’t you Edith Conday’s daughter?”
“Why yes,” said Edie, turning around to shake the proffered hand of an elderly woman. “My name’s Edie.”
“I’m Shirley Tascalone, and this is my granddaughter Holly,” the woman said. She turned to the young woman next to her. “Now this is the daughter of the 1976 Olympic Bronze Medalist in Dressage. I’ll never forget the day I saw her win. I have the autographed picture right here.” As she began digging through her over-sized purse she asked, “Now what was the name of her horse?”
“Dahlink,” Edie said with a bittersweet smile.
“Dahlink! That’s the name!” Mrs. Tascalone exclaimed, producing a folded square of thick paper. She unfolded it to reveal a monochrome photograph with a purple dedication and signature inked on it: “To a fellow equestrienne, Edith Conday & Dahlink.”
Edie took the offered photo and looked at it for a few seconds. It was the standard publicity photo that most fans owned, with a petite Edith Conday sitting atop the svelte black Dahlink. There was a look in the horse’s eye of utter confidence, like she had won the medal all by herself, and the human’s role was merely ballast to make the job that much more challenging.
As a child, Edie remembered once reading about the mythical pooka, how it could turn itself into a black horse that would lure you into getting on its back, and then whisk you away into Fairyland, never to be seen by mortal creatures ever again.
She used to be convinced that Dahlink was a pooka.
Edie shook her head lightly to clear it of mental cobwebs, and handed the photo back to its owner.
An owner who had been babbling on for nearly a minute now. “...And I’m sure she raised you on the back of that horse!” was how Mrs. Tascalone ended her speech.
What the woman said struck unexpectedly close to the broadcast reporter. “Ah, not exactly,” Edie answered, brushing away a nonexistent tear and hoping that the woman would stop right there.
“Not exactly!” Mrs. Tascalone exclaimed instead. “What, did she die before you were born? Oh, how horrible.”
“Ah...not exactly.”
“‘Not exactly’?” Mrs. Tascalone said, leaning forward. “What is with all this ‘not exactly’? Did she die or didn’t she?”
“I...I don’t know, Mrs. Tascalone,” Edie said, bowing her head. “My mother was forced to sell her when I was four.”
“Sell?” Mrs. Tascalone asked incredulously. “How could she sell an Olympic medal horse?”
“Well, times were tough,” Edie said apologetically. “My mother didn’t have the mo...I mean the time, to devote to her.”
“Oh, that’s utter nonsense!” Mrs. Tascalone exclaimed. “I used to live here back in the ‘80’s, and I know for a fact that there were plenty of good-quality stables where a horse like Dahlink could have been cared for at a reasonable price. Just so long as both of your parents contributed, it should have been no problem to cover her room and board.”
Edie looked away uncomfortably.
“Grandma, I think—” Holly Tascalone tried to interrupt.
“Hush, child,” Mrs. Tascalone said, not even looking at her. “I want to know why you abandoned an Olympic medal horse like that!”
“My father left us, alright!” Edie cried out. “I did something wrong, and he left us!”
“Ack, that would do it alright,” said Mrs. Tascalone, nodding sagely to herself as her granddaughter watched on in horror. “But at least you became a famous newscaster and bought her another horse to make up for—”
“Make up for what?” Edie cried, turning around and leaning in to get in the old woman’s face. “Make up years of telling me that I was a mistake, that she’d never love me as much as she loved Daklink? And when I did make the money, and I did buy the horse, what did she do? She died, Mrs. Tascalone, she died! And ‘Dahlink’ was the name on her lips when she died in her bed with her hand in mine, because by that point she didn’t even remember who I was! Is there anything else you’d like to ask?”
A shocked Mrs. Tascalone said nothing as her granddaughter led her away. “I’m really sorry,” the young woman said as they retreated. “I think she forgot to take her meds.”
Edie turned around to see Amy staring at her.
“Err...have you got anything on the aliens?” Amy asked as she took the place taken by the Tascalones. It was evident that her approach to getting around an uncomfortable situation was to ignore it. She moved aside Mrs. Tascalone’s abandoned Rose Parade program as she sat down.
Edie took in a long calming breath before speaking. “Yeah,” she told Amy, “these two think they’ve figured out why the aliens fled instead of contacting us.” She then introduced the reporter to the two students, who had spent the past few minutes trying to be invisible as the shouting match had developed around them.
“Oh?” Amy asked.
“Um, yeah, what did we find?” Brian asked Frank.
Frank thought for a few seconds. “Oh! One of the aliens fainted when they arrived,” he finally explained.
Brian turned the laptop towards her and played one of the videos.
“I don’t see...oh, the one in the middle,” Amy said. “Yeah, that makes sense.” After a few seconds she smirked. “Wow, I bet she’s going to be so embarrassed that she almost screwed this up when she recovers.”
“What makes you think that it’s a she?” Brian asked.
“They’re all-powerful, all-knowing aliens here on a very delicate diplomatic mission,” Amy replied flippantly. “No way would you trust that kind of job to a guy!”
Brian looked over at the retreating forms of the Tascalones. He desperately wanted to say something about the female ability to screw things up, but he figured it was an argument he was doomed to lose.
“Hey, we’re kinda making contact with them right now, aren’t we?” mused Edie. “Even if they’re out of sight, they can still hear us out on the street.”
Amy frowned as she saw Captain Fenwick turn away yet another loud-mouthed idiot. “Yeah, I think maybe we should be giving them a better first impression.” She glanced over at the Rose Parade program and grinned. “And I know exactly what to give them,” she said, as she picked up her microphone to communicate with her producer.