I Will Love You Forever

Chapter 4, part 1: Town

Chapter 4: Complications

Dammit, sir, we shot it down, without warning!" Jill Ramos was trying to control her frustration, but she could feel her eyes getting wet. This bureaucrat just wasn't listening. It was bad enough getting dragged out to the middle of Idaho, without being able to talk to her parents or anyone at the school, but Jill and Zack had figured out that they had fired a weapon that shot down a visitor from another world. Overwhelmed by grief about what they had done, Jill was trying to get someone to listen, but everyone except Zack kept talking about threats.

Mr. Small was sitting comfortably behind the desk he rated as civilian head of the project, while she stood in front of it. Major Handy was there as well. She wanted to talk with him, too, but not here. It was Mr. Small's turn to speak.

"Ms. Ramos, you make a fair point. We did make the first aggressive act." Finally! Mr. Small considered her a moment. "It is gratifying to hear you acknowledge that your actions were a mistake." You've got to be kidding me. All he cares about is covering his ass?

"Nevertheless, the fact that the alien chooses not to identify itself, assuming there is a surviving alien from what was apparently a crash, does not speak well for its intentions with respect to Earth."

"Sir, excuse me, but that seems like paranoia. We should expect it to hide, since we shot it down. Wouldn't you hide?"

"And then what should we do, Ms. Ramos? True, you may have done the wrong thing in firing on an alien spacecraft, but the fact is that it was fired upon, and now it is down. If there are any survivors, they are hiding from us. However it happened, they almost certainly see our country and perhaps the entire planet as a threat, and therefore they represent a threat to us." He shook his head. "If they voluntarily come forward, we might be able to make friends. If not, they have invaded our world, and they must surely expect us to defend it."

Small stood. "I have many matters to attend to Ms. Ramos. Unless you have another urgent matter, I must bid you good day."

Outside the door, Jill ignored the sympathetic looks she got from Small's Administrative Assistant, and went to his outer office to wait.

The meeting had been very unsatisfactory. Jill had been hoping she could budge Small from his conviction that the best way to protect the planet from threats was to take no chances at all. Even she had to admit that an arriving alien represented the largest unknown in modern times—maybe in all of human history. No one knew if it was dangerous or not. Still, she told herself, We fired first.

It was ten more minutes before Major Robert Handy came out. The major had been Jill's main contact, since she and Zack had been brought inside after being arrested. She liked him, despite his perpetually worried look. He worked with the general, Jill knew. She liked the general, too, although she'd only met him a couple of times.

She fell in beside the major. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

He sighed. "Ms. Ramos ..."

"Miss. Please, or call me Jill."

He chuckled. "All right. Call me Bob, then." He opened the door to his office. "I have another meeting in an hour, and I have about two hours of preparation to do for it. Please, Jill, make it quick. I've already told you that I cannot influence Herbert Small. If it means anything to you, I happen to agree with you, and I'm not the only one who does."

Jill wondered if that meant General Peters agreed. If so, he was the head of the whole project. She frowned, and opened her mouth.

"Don't ask. Jill, if that's what you wanted to talk about, I'm afraid I really do have other things I need to do."