Touched by an Alien

had walls. It also had a large screen in addition to another huge conference table and plenty of chairs. The translations of the Ancients’ books were available in hard copy, but the originals were computer-created documents.
    Everyone was arguing about what portion of the text to look at first when Claudia and Lorraine came in. They grabbed me away from Martini and took me over to a corner of the room.
    “We heard,” Claudia whispered. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m totally freaked out.” I hoped they were talking about my dream and not my sexual escapades with Martini.
    “Who wouldn’t be?” Lorraine asked. “Mephistopheles has been in existence for twenty years, and we’ve never been able to kill him.”
    Twenty years? This was a little tidbit no one had shared with me yet. “How have you allowed him to do all he has as Ronald Yates?”
    “We didn’t make the Yates connection until a couple of years ago,” Claudia admitted. “It’s hard for a dead agent to tell us much.”
    This hit me in my stomach. I knew several agents personally now, one very personally. The reality of what they did for a living washed over me. Any one of them could be killed by these superbeings, just as a human could. For all I knew, one of their number had died at the courthouse—I hadn’t asked, after all.
    Martini came over. “Stop freaking her out; she’s upset enough. None of us died yesterday.” He put his hand on my neck and started massaging again. “No one can agree on what to look at first,” he added with a sigh.
    “I know what I want to look at.” I did? “I want to read what the Ancients said about the parasites, how they came into being.” Why did I want to read this?
    “Okay.” Martini gave me a funny look, but he relayed my request to Gower.
    Claudia and Lorraine sat down with me while the text rolled up onto the screen. Gower handed me what looked like a superduper computer mouse. “You control the speed with this button,” he pointed to a round knob on the top.
    The text was choppy—you could tell it had been translated by people who had no idea of what the original language sounded like. Dad stood behind me, reading along. Mostly it sounded as though the Ancients were trying to explain who they were, so their warnings would carry weight.
    “Can we see the original text?” Dad asked, his tone thoughtful.
    “Why? It’s in an alien language,” White replied.
    “It translated, didn’t it?” Dad didn’t sound huffy. He sounded as though he was getting excited. “I just want to see it.”
    A thought occurred. “Um, Dad? What is it that you do for a living? I mean really, not what you’ve told me all my life.”
    Mom was in front of me and to the left. I saw her give a small nod, and I assumed Dad had just asked permission to share the truth.
    “I’m a cryptologist,” he admitted. This was a far cry from college history professor, which was what I’d been told all my life. “But,” he added hastily, “I do teach at the university.”
    “As your cover. Which agency do you work for?” Long silence. “Dad? I mean it, I want to know.” I didn’t turn to look at him. I had a feeling he wouldn’t tell me if he had to look me in the eyes.
    “NASA,” he said finally.
    “NASA. In their extraterrestrial division, right?” I’d never heard of this division, but after a day with the boys from A-C, I had a good idea it existed.
    “Right.” He sighed. “I don’t see the kind of action your mother does. I don’t see action at all, really. Cryptology isn’t a field job. I didn’t know we had ETs on the planet, though—that’s on a need-to-know basis—”
    “And you didn’t need to know. Got it.” Nice to see other people besides my mother were withholding information from my father. Of course, I’d spent my entire life believing he was a tenured history professor at Arizona State University, so clearly Dad was also into the need-to-know lifestyle. Chuckie and I had even taken his classes. Of course, most of his classes were taught by grad students. As I considered this, history professor seemed like a great cover.
    “Right. My group works more with the transmissions we pick up from the other inhabited planets.”
    “Not just the Alpha Centauri planets, right?” I was taking this remarkably well. I wondered how long my calm would last.
    “Right. This is the only alien text we’ve got. The rest are all audio only. It’s why I want to see it.” He was lying, I could