Distraught women Taggert could handle.  But men--he just didn't know how to act.  Stuffing a toothpick into his mouth, he followed the father upstairs.

"She's had the same bedroom now for fifteen years," Charles Jenes said, as if explaining the room's incongruous appearance.

Taggert nodded, taking in the doll collection of the child, the rock-star posters of the teen, and the over-flowing vanity of the woman.  Age six to twenty-one.

He'd been called in on this missing-person case just this afternoon.  No police, just him, the private investigator.  Jenes was evidently reluctant to involve the authorities.

Taggert picked up a photo, a young woman pool-side, holding a trophy.

"This her?"

"Yes, at eighteen, a high school freestyle champion."  Charles Jenes, all father now, no high-powered executive or charming host, wiped away a tear.

Taggert looked the other way and shuffled through some innocuous-looking items on the vanity.  He hated this kind of case.  The only thing worse was no case.

He turned back to the father.  "Okay."  He started counting off points on his fingers:

"College student, good grades, attractive, athletic."

That's going to be the only good finger, he thought, before going on to finger number two.

"But not so popular as you might think; she's troubled, joins some groups, like Greenpeace and Philes&Phobes, and connects with some serious malcontents.

"Supposed to come home for Easter but bows out at the last minute with some half-baked excuse."  From here on, the fingers just got worse.

"That's a month ago, now you discover she's hasn't been going to classes for half the semester and her roommate hasn't seen her for six weeks.

"And, finally, you notice that she's recently taken out large cash advances on her credit cards, actually your cards."

Taggert folded his five out-stretched fingers briefly into a fist before dropping his hand.  "Is that about it?"

Jenes nodded, seeming a bit distracted.  It's hard to believe this guy's worth millions, he thought.

"Well, Mr. Jenes, I understand your concern, but what do we have here?  She's no longer a minor, so it's not a runaway thing. She's an adult now.  And that credit card stuff, you say her signature checks out, so what's the problem?  There's no crime if the cards are in her name, even if it is your money."

At the mention of the credit cards, the father regained his wits.

"Whoa, let's back up a bit," he started.  "I'm not concerned about the money.  I just want to know where she is, that's she's okay.  Open a line of communication.

"Let me tell you what I think," Jenes continued.  "She could have gotten her hands on a lot more money if that had been her intention.  I think she just took enough for a... a project, God help her."

Taggert pulled over the narrow vanity bench and sat down.  Might as well hear about it here, in a room full of possible clues, rather than in the father's den.

"A project?" he prompted.

"Yeah, I think college radicalized Fiona.  An old story, I'm sure, but, well, look at these books...."

Taggert dutifully ran a finger along the spines of a dozen books on a shelf adjacent to the vanity.  He picked out a lurid red-and-black one and perused the back-cover blurb, reading portions out loud.

"`Terra-cytes... Earth-cells... like the guardian white blood cells of the earth's own immune system, summoned to defense by a cancer attacking from within... the cancer being corporate pollution, the terracytes being environmental vigilantes... a call for Criminal Altruism.'"  He whistled.  "Is this one of the groups she belongs to, doing stuff like this?"

Jenes hung his head.  "I... just don't know.  I hope..."

Yeah, I know what you hope, Taggert thought, cutting Jenes off.  "Do you have anything concrete?"

"No, just these books--and things she's been saying over this past year."  He picked up a cute stuffed elephant.  "Like this, one of her treasured toys from back when she was eight or so.  Last summer I found it in the garbage.  When I took it back to her and asked her why, she practically had a fit.

"She shoved the elephant at me, showing me the CSSP logo.  She went on and on about the Corporate Sponsored Species Program, something she, and everyone else on the planet, or at least in this household, has always ignored--or thought was a pretty good thing."

Taggert was playing mental catch-up.  CSSP?  He had to rack his brain before he remembered.  All these endangered species were being saved by corporations adopting them, to the tune of millions of dollars each.  And the corporations then own the image of that species.  On television, in magazines, on toys, whenever that species' reproduction appeared, the corporation's logo was legally linked to it.  Let's see, the ones he knew were, yeah, that geriatric musician and chimps, Buddy Burgers and bison, Sunkist and tuna, Chevrolet and cheetah, tigers and something, and well, lions, grizzlies, whales, you name it.  He didn't think all those species were actually saved, though, unless you count in the zoos.  He remembered some people joking that soon the corporations would be branding their logos onto the actual animals.  He didn't think they did that yet, though.

Jenes was continuing.  "She throws the elephant into a corner and starts lecturing me.  `How would you like it if some aliens from another planet came and told us they were going to be charitable and let us live on 2% of our planet as long as we let them own our image?'  It shocked me, I tell you, not only what she said, but how... the fervor.  I discussed it with my wife and we decided to just let it go, it was a stage.  And what could we do anyway?"

Taggert shook his head sympathetically, but was thinking, hell, you give a child that much freedom to talk to you that way and, sure enough, you got problems.  People need to be on their kids from day one.  Or, by the time day 5000 comes around, it's too late.  You end up calling in somebody like me.  Or worse.

Jenes placed the toy elephant carefully on a shelf, like it was something precious.  He just stood there, lost.

Taggert got up and led the father out of the daughter's room.  They would go to the den to discuss payment plans.
 
 

The roommate was more sexy than pretty.  Something she worked on, Taggert thought.  Something he would like to work on, he thought.

"No, it was just like that," Candy snapped her fingers, "everything fine, then she's not there when I get back from a weekend with..." a lascivious grin "... when I get back from a weekend.  Just a note, not to worry, she may drop out for a while, blah, blah, blah."

"So you didn't call her parents or go to the administration after a while, Candy?"  He liked using her obviously assumed, ever so sweet, name.

"No, what for?  The note was in her handwriting.  She's a big girl."  Another suggestive grin.  "And I don't mind having the place to myself."

"Boyfriends?" Taggert asked.  "Hers, not yours," he amended, with a grin of his own.

"Oh, lots at first--we've roomed together two years now--but lately, nobody, not for a while.  Like she lost interest."  Candy frowned, like how could that be.  "Ever since she went through that weird name change."

"Name change?" Taggert prompted.  Didn't people realize when they said something important that might require a little explanation?

"A few months ago, after this Greenpeace lecture she and some friends went to, I guess someone picked up on her love of animals--I mean real animals, not just dogs or cats--anyway, Fiona became Fauna."  She wrinkled her pug nose.  "Pretty corny, I thought."

"Who were these friends who went to this lecture with her?  Anybody new?"

"No, not really.  And none of them got weird about Greenpeace and all, either, just Fiona."  She smiled, cocking her head.  "I mean, Fauna.'"

Taggert figured it would be all right with Candy if Fiona, I mean Fauna, just stayed missing.  Or whatever she was.  Any friendship between the two had evidently evaporated when social issues entered Fiona's life.  I mean...

Just as he was about to give her a card and the obligatory if-you-remember-anything closing remarks, Candy gave a cute little squeal.

"You know, there was someone.  I never met him, but she went on and on about him one night.  Then nothing.  So, I don't know, but anyway this guy was a scientist and old, forty or something.  I think he was a speaker at the Greenpeace rally."

Taggert knew a lead when it bit him.  "What else do you remember about this guy?"  Please give me a name, he thought, even if only a `Bill' or a `Bob'.

She shrugged.  "Besides being old, what's to remember?"

Thanks a lot, Taggert thought.  Just what his forty-two-year-old ego needed.

Candy licked her lips.  "She thought he was cute though, so I guess I'd rule out fat or bald."

Taggert left with his ego in shreds.
 
 

She was keeping an eye on some routine experiments when Chris called her over.

"Fauna, look at this."

She came over right away.  It still thrilled her to hear him call her by the name he gave her after their first night together.  Christened by Chris.

He beamed as he showed her the latest bio-assay read-out.  This was the fourth time it checked out.  Now he had tried out every way he could think of to prove himself wrong.  Couldn't do it!

She giggled as they did a celebrative dance around the lab.

"So when can we release it?" she asked her hero.  Even though she was partially financing this final stage, it was still his show.

"There are a few details to clean up here."  He pursed his lips, thinking.  "Couple days.  Say Friday."

She whooped and spun around the lab in a now-solo jig.

Chris felt the need to rein her in.  "The publication is only the start.  It'll take weeks for scientific verification."

"Weeks?" she wailed.

"At least.  But they'll know it looks good, damn good, in only a day or two.  This will make headlines for months."

Fiona laughed.  "To call this the event of the century is an understatement."

But, later, as Fiona sat down at the word-processor and composed the announcement, Chris set about some sobering tasks.  He would have to fake an accident at the lab--one big enough to destroy both everything he had been and should have been working on these last two years, before a fortuitous error had led him on this incredible line of investigation.

He had been sending in false reports on his grant all this time.  He had long ago quit working on some obscure pure research, and had moved on to monumental applied science.  He had gambled--and won.  But now he needed to cover his tracks.

Besides these falsifications--criminal and career-ending acts by themselves--he would in essence be stealing the fruits of his own research.  The federal government, through its grant-issuing agencies, had proprietary rights, as did the university, on whose faculty he served, and in whose lab he labored.

He had a lot to lose if discovered.  And that was even before he embarked on one of the most ambitious hoaxes ever conceived.

He looked fondly at Fiona as she worked on the announcement, her unblemished skin radiant even in the lab's harsh light.  The risks were all worth it.  And, after all, it had been his idea.
 
 

It was a typical overcast morning in the coastal university town when Chris Taber walked down the steps of his apartment, heart thumping, and brought in the newspaper.

Fiona was eagerly waiting when he returned, a thin robe pulled tightly across her shoulders.

"Well?" she impatiently asked, though she knew he wouldn't have looked without her.

This was the third morning they went through this ritual.  They both privately nursed fears that they might be ignored by The Times.

He spread the paper out on the kitchen table and they both cheered when they saw the headlines.

The entire first page was allotted to their announcement.  Suddenly Chris hoped it wouldn't seem sophomoric or theatrical.

He remembered his discomfort at paring away some of Fiona's more radical statements.  But she had accepted most of his changes without comment.  Chris figured she knew she had a tendency to go overboard and would have scaled down some of the drama herself, had he not been over-seeing it.

She had written the bulk of the short announcement.  But they both knew it was his lengthy appendix that would give them the necessary credence.

A virtual cure for cancer was a surefire attention-getter.

Actually, it was merely a tumor-shrinking agent.  But the regimen seemed to work for all cancers and, as long as detection was early, that amounted to a cure.

Chris was under no illusions, however, as to how scientific progress advanced.  At a certain point, the next juncture was inevitable.  At most, he might be two years ahead of the field; maybe only months.  He had to hope this appendix would grab the public like a paradigm shift--a spark, not inspired, but literally from out of this world.

But right now, they both ignored that appendix.  It was over Fiona's head and Chris had rechecked its minutiae so many times, he had it memorized.

It was the tone of the announcement itself that they now reconsidered in the light of day, on the black and white of newsprint.

Fiona read it out loud:
 
 

"`Call Me Alien.

"`I am addressing humanity for the first time.  That you may know I am not of the earth, I am giving you something not of the earth... something the earth has never had:  A cure for cancer.

"`This gift is my credential.  It is not my message.  It is a measure of my message.

"`My message is simple, urgent and grave:  Stop extinguishing photosynthesis.

"`Stop using what little remains of your forests.  Retreat from them.  Stop dumping in the oceans.  Their phytoplankton is the basis of life on your oxygen-rich planet.

"`Whatever modifications in life-style that this requires of you will be relatively small.  First, you must...'  I'll skip all those details," Fiona interjected.  This was one of the areas where Chris had reduced some of her rhetoric, keeping the demands do-able.  She cleared her voice and continued reading.

"`The utter spoilage of a planet's beauty is not allowed.  No less a cause for intervention is the incipient self-destruction of a sapient species.

"`Once you have complied, you will realize such compliance is my real gift to you.

"`As you can see, I prefer to motivate with incentives.'"
 
 They were both silent for few moments after Fiona finished.  It was over that last line that they had nearly argued.  Its implied threat was much less overt than what Fiona had advocated.  She had initially included a time-line after which some vague but dire threat to humanity would be activated.

Fiona still thought her original ending best:  "Who gives can also take.  This is the carrot; wait not the whip."  Though far younger than Chris, she was the more cynical, perhaps because once so idealistic.

Chris broke the silence.  "I think the tone is good.  Superior, but not over-bearing; formal, yet not somber.  It sounds like some super-alien.  And the paper carried it just right, full exposure, the biggest damn headlines I've ever seen."

He flipped through the paper.  "They've already had several cancer clinics look over the appendix and admit it looks promising."  He went on to the second section.  "Conjecture from the editorials.  Reactions from everywhere--the White House to Japan to..."

He looked up to see Fiona crying.  "We did it," she choked.  "We've saved the world..."  And started laughing.
 

Like nine billion other people, Taggert followed the story over the next month.  You couldn't avoid it.  There were plenty of people with something to say.

Politicians were jumping every which way as they tried to gauge shifting public sentiments.  Religious leaders either thundered or stammered.  Environmental organizations were quick to declare their I-told-you-so's.  Doctors, according to their specialty, were thrilled or panicked.  The logging and waste management industries' lobbies tried to conjure up worldwide indignation, without much success.  Scientists went on and on about the virtues of phytoplankton, stuff you can't even see, but was responsible for 80% of the earth's oxygen and a hell of a lot of its food.

The biggest hoopla came when the tumor-shrinking bit in that appendix checked out.  But more than impressed or grateful, people were scared.  And ready to do under pressure, what they should have done anyway:  Leave something for tomorrow.

Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was just luck, but Taggert went out of his way to take a look at that appendix, despite its jargon being way out of his educational league.  He was shocked to discover that some of the phraseology appeared familiar:  "poly-clonal protein antibody delivery", "forced phasic administration", "hyaluronidase uptake", "negative vascularization feedback", and so on.

Then it hit him.  "Christ!" he muttered, "It's them."

He still had the Jenes file on his desk, even though he had closed that eventually prosaic case after routinely informing on the daughter's whereabouts.  He quickly rifled through that file now.

For a while, back then, he had become suspicious when he tracked Fiona to a lab, thinking maybe they were working on a bomb or something.  So he had done a little snooping, otherwise known as breaking-and-entering.  And theft, if you want to get technical.

He was now perusing copies of those documents he had found at the boyfriend's lab.  Bingo!  An almost word for word match with segments of that "Alien" appendix.

He thought about it all evening and then couldn't sleep, thinking about it some more.  He lay there in his cheap rented room and planned a sumptuous future that featured Bahamian bank accounts, tropical bars on Ko Phi Phi, and ski vacations at St. Moritz.

The university or the government would be interested of course, but there would be nothing in it for him.  And to approach the organized-crime-run waste management industry was too risky.  No, he would contact the Timber Consortium.  Entice the timber companies and let them collectively make an offer on the proof he could supply.  Exposing the hoax would be worth billions to them and that should be worth tens of millions to him.

Taggert's last case, he thought.  Call Me Rich.
 

Copyright 1998 Will Sand
 
You can e-mail Will wsandtt@redshift.com