HE’S ONLY HUMAN

HE’S ONLY HUMAN
Lawrence Watt-Evans

The Speaker of the House stared at the President Pro Tem of the Senate. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I can,” she replied. “I’m very serious.”

“But he’s the President of the United States! I know he’s not our party, but he can’t… I mean, you’re sure?”

She nodded.

“What about the vice president? The Cabinet? Are any of them aliens?”

The senator glanced at the office door, making certain it was securely closed—it would not do to have anyone overhear. “Human, all of them,” she replied. “Not a single extraterrestrial in the lot.”

“But how could this happen?” the Speaker protested. “How could we have completely lost control of the executive branch? Isn’t there something we can do?”

She shrugged. “Do you have any suggestions, Mr. Speaker?”

He looked helplessly around the office. “Is it too late to make a substitution? Can’t we infiltrate somewhere? I mean, leaving the country in the hands of humans—it’s not safe! How could the Commission ever have let it happen?”

“Someone got careless, I suppose.”

“Carelessness on that level is the exact reason we came here in the first place! Are we getting as sloppy as the humans, now? Did someone get overconfident just because their Cold War has been over for a couple of decades?”

The senator shrugged, a human gesture she had become rather fond of.

“We have no way to infiltrate the White House and replace him?”

“Oh, we can certainly get in there,” the senator said. “We have the equipment—but we have no one accredited to take the job, and no costume ready. It would take weeks to grow a disguise good enough to pass muster.”

“Well, something must be done, and immediately!” the Speaker said, getting to his feet. “We’ll just have to remove the president and vice president. I’m next in line, and I can get some of our people into the Cabinet and line things up for the next election.”

The senator was silent for a moment, then said, “That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?”

“It’s a drastic situation. We can’t trust humans with spaceships and nuclear weapons!”

“Should we contact the Commission first, to let them know our plans?”

“There isn’t time; the next relay ship isn’t due for almost a month. They’ve always trusted field agents to act responsibly, and I think it would be totally irresponsible to leave a human president in the White House.”

“It’s your decision, sir—you’re the senior agent—but I admit I’m a little reluctant to interfere so directly. Removing both the president and vice president…”

“It’s necessary, clearly,” the Speaker told her. “We’ll go tonight.”

* * * *

They had removed their disguises, of course—if by some horrible mischance they were spotted, it would hardly do for the Speaker and the President Pro Tem to be seen sneaking into the president’s bedroom. The senator had suggested substituting some other human guise, but the Speaker had refused, for two sound reasons: Nobody had any business sneaking into the president’s bedroom, and besides, it would take too long to grow them.

If anyone saw them, that person would probably assume he was dreaming, and certainly wouldn’t be believed if he talked about it later. Two three-foot-tall aliens creeping through the White House corridors, using mysterious machinery to open locks and evade security devices, would surely seem more like a Secret Service agent’s nightmare than a real possibility.

They moved silently down the corridor, thanks more to a dampening field than any natural stealth, and used light distorters to make themselves effectively invisible in the shadows whenever they had to pass near a human being—though the distorters had the rather severe drawback of impairing the users’ own vision as well, limiting their usefulness.

The door to the presidential bedroom popped open at the touch of a handheld device, and they stepped cautiously into the darkened room…

And the lights came on suddenly, leaving them blinking foolishly at the sight of four Secret Service agents pointing weapons at them.

And the weapons weren’t the standard-issue human-made 9mm automatics, but Krung neural suppressors.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” someone said, and they looked past the black-suited guards to see the president standing beside his bed, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. “They told me they’d spotted some extraterrestrial shenanigans goin’ on, but I didn’t think they’d actually catch two of you sneakin’ in here!”

“Urk,” the Speaker said.

“Now, just who are you, and what did you boys want with me?”

“Uh…” the President Pro Tem said.

“This one’s not a boy, sir,” one of the Secret Service agents said, gesturing at the senator. “It’s a female.”

“Oh? How can you…no, don’t tell me.”

The Speaker and the senator looked at one another. No human would have recognized the senator’s sex—which meant that though the president was human, at least one of his guards was not. And judging by the Krung weapons and all the rest, the president knew it.

That changed everything. She asked, “What’s going on? Why weren’t we told?”

The president laughed. “Seems to me that it’s you who have some explaining to do, little lady! Who are you two, anyway?”

“I am Heo designate Fu-jerin, from the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani,” the Speaker said.

“The Speaker of the House of Representatives, sir,” a Secret Service agent explained.

The Speaker and the senator looked at one another again.

“It’s a set-up,” the senator said. “An ordinary agent wouldn’t know your name.”

“Probably a test of some kind,” the Speaker agreed. “I suspect we just flunked.”

“I’m afraid so,” the Secret Service agent said. “The Commission was considering you for a new post, now that we’re turning Earth over to the natives, and set up this situation to see how you’d handle it. I think if you go back through the e-mail you’ve let pile up over the last few weeks you’ll find some interesting reading.”

“I don’t have time to read my own e-mail!” the Speaker protested. “I’ve been busy running the country! We didn’t want this one to fall apart the way the Soviet Union did…”

“Running the country is my job, Mr. Speaker,” the president said mildly.

The Speaker glared at him with immense green eyes. “It shouldn’t be!” he retorted. “You humans would’ve blown each other up fifty years ago if we hadn’t intervened!”

“That was then,” the Secret Service agent replied. “This is now. You really should have kept up on the reports, Fu-jerin. We’ve been discussing a gradual reversion of control for the past two years.”

“I saw some of the discussions, but I didn’t know it was being implemented…”

The Secret Service agents didn’t reply; they just stared at him over their Krung suppressors.

“Someone should have told me,” the Speaker protested weakly.

“Tell that to the Commission,” a Secret Service agent said.

“What’s going to happen to us?” the senator asked.

“You’re going to leave peacefully and go back to your normal activities,” the Secret Service agent said. “I wouldn’t recommend running for re-election, though.”

“You aren’t going to do anything to us?”

“What would we do? You think we want headlines about aliens trying to kidnap the president?”

“I suppose not.” She looked forlornly at the president. “Our apologies, sir,” she said. “We meant no harm.”

“No harm done,” he said, waving a hand in dismissal. “If it’s any comfort, these boys do keep an eye on me, just in case I do somethin’ stupid.” He gestured at the Secret Service agents. “We’re taking it one step at a time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And while you’re here, I’d just like to say somethin’,” the president continued. “Maybe it’s just me bein’ a little too proud, but I like to think we would have managed to not blow ourselves up even if you fellows hadn’t interfered. You comin’ in and secretly takin’ over the governments of half a dozen countries the way you did was a lowdown sneaky thing to do, and you didn’t have any right to do it. It came as one hell of a shock to me when I found out just what all you’d done, and I was madder ’n hell at first.”

“But…” the Speaker began.

The president stopped him with a raised hand.

“That said,” he said, “I gotta say, you kept up your end of the bargain. You could’ve stomped us all flat, or let us blow ourselves up, and you didn’t, and now that your High Commission’s decided we can be trusted, you’re pullin’ out, little by little. It’s plain you meant well. So while I can’t quite bring myself to say thanks for takin’ over the world, I will say that I appreciate the thought. Now, get out of here and let me get some sleep; I’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning.”

And with that, he turned away, while the Secret Service agents escorted the two intruders out of the room.

As the two aliens made their way through the secret network of tunnels under the Washington streets, back toward the workshop where they had left their human disguises, the Speaker said bitterly, “It’s all very well having infiltrated the Secret Service, and telling the president the truth, and that was a pretty speech he made, but I still don’t like it. When you come right down to it he’s still only human.”

The senator glanced at her companion, and would have shrugged if she were wearing shoulders.

“They could do worse,” she said.