My Europa Part 5

5

“Who leaked it?” bellowed Reynolds, pacing his office furiously.  “What damn mouthy pipsqueak slipped the mickey and tumbled his flaccid brain out to the press?  I’ll string the little melba beast up by his balls, I swear to Christ!”  The only others present in the Congressperson’s office was Thaddeus Wright, the sub-committee’s legal counsel, standing by a bookshelf filled with seldom read tomes, and Congressperson Barista, who sat sprawled on a sofa.

“Now, Dabney, you really didn’t think something like this could be kept quiet, did you?” said Barista, as if trying to explain the basic facts of life to a toddler.  “There’s some form of life outside Earth.  That’s big news.  How long did you think it would be before that came out?”

“It had to be that little weasel, Staninski.  That son of a bitch can’t keep quiet about anything!”  Arnold Staninski was a Communist Party representative from California, and the only one on the sub-committee.  Staninski was a solid, stocky man, with a crewcut, and looked more like a dock worker than a Leninesque radical.  He had a habit of blowing up hearings, revealing stuff he shouldn’t and then apologizing later that he didn’t understand that it was supposed to be kept confidential.

“That doesn’t explain the leaked footage that came shortly after the initial news broke,” piped in Thaddeus.  “That couldn’t have come from us.  That had to have been leaked by someone at NASA or the military.”

“So?” roared Reynolds. “That just means one of their little crappers leaked it, either on their own, or more likely, at Staninski’s urging.”  Reynolds pointed a crooked finger at Barista.  “I told you Progressives not to back letting the Communists form a party.  Y’all just did it to make yourselves look good by contrast, and now we is all paying the price!”

“Calm down, Dabney,” soothed Barista.  “It’s not going to do you or us any good to have a stroke about it.  They met the criteria to form a party.  It’s not us.  It’s the rules we all agreed upon.  And look, they’re the smallest party in Congress.  Seriously, nine members out of almost sixteen hundred?”

“Yeah, and it only takes one of them Trotsky pinkos to frack up the works!” Dabney challenged.

“So the Europian monster is out of the bag,” replied Barista, coming out of his slump and sitting up straight.  “Big deal.  Maybe the public has a right to know.  These are momentous issues and they have a right to participate in the decision.”

“No doubt they do,” replied Thaddeus Wright, going over to Congressperson Reynolds and putting in his hand on his shoulder. Dabney visibly relaxed and took a seat in a wingback chair opposite the sofa.  “From the polling I’ve seen, about a third of the people want us to fly up there right now with a manned scientific mission and make contact.”

“Yeah, well, this ain’t likely to be E.T.  or Mork, ya know.  It’s likely to try to eat everybody, ship and all,” complained Reynolds.

“We don’t know that,” said Barista.  “All that we know for sure is that it collided with the ship in such a way that knocked out communications.  We don’t know anything beyond that.”

“Bullcrap!  I think it ate it!” scoffed Reynolds.

Thaddeus reasserted himself, trying to take back control of the conversation.  “Please let me finish, gentleman. Then we can descend back to caterwauling.”  Barista and Reynold nodded their agreement to quiet down, and Thaddeus continued.  “Another third wants us to send another unmanned probe, but with scientific equipment specifically designed for better analysis. The rest are split between doing nothing, or going there with a full military force and exterminate what’s ever up there, and there’s even about five percent that want us to just go there and blow the whole moon up.  And yes, there’s even about 3 percent who think the whole thing is a hoax.”

“New Conservative Party extremists, no doubt,” smirked Barista.

“I’m leaning towards a mixed mission.  Some scientists, but mostly military people.  We have to be prepared to kick this thing’s ass if we have to,” said Reynolds.

Barista raised his hand, as if he were in a classroom, and then began to answer. “You know, I agree that we need a manned mission, but I don’t understand why it has to be so heavily militarized.  I mean, if aliens come to Earth, descending into our oceans, would they feel obligated to blast away a whale if it came near?  This most likely isn’t a sentient creature.  It’s probably some animal of some kind.  We invaded its territory. We just have to come in with more common sense and restraint.  I think over spending on the military aspect is a waste.”

Reynolds was infuriated. “Forget the beasty that ate the Nautilus IV!  What the hell was that green stick bug alien?  The damn thing had some kind of ghastly face!  Now that coulda been, what did you say?  Sentient?  Yeah, it could have been sentient!  It coulda been directing the monster to consume the ship!”

“That’s ridiculous!’ Barista responded, getting up off the sofa.

“Maybe,” replied Reynolds.  “But it’s a ridiculousness believed by the Sub-committee chairman and Democratic Party House Minority Whip.  So I got the toys, and I usually get my way.”

“Not without the Progressive Party, you don’t.  It’s almost impossible to get things through Congress without our support!” asserted Barista.

“Damn, boy!  Haven’t you polled your own members?  They’re all over the map on this!  How y’all gonna get together to force me to do anything?”

Dammit it all, Congressperson Alfredo Barista thought.  He’s right.  He’d had all kinds of opinions coming from Progressive members, everything except for blowing it up.  In a just a day of leaked news, everyone had scattered, worried more about their constituents than they were about the incredible scientific impact.  All the progress that had been made politically in the last decade, and still polls held sway for so many.

“Well, gentlemen,” Thaddeus Wright said, “it looks like we have a real important decision to make.  Let’s find out if this new, unwieldy Congress can actually function in a way that brings results.”

Barista realized that this was going to be a real challenge.  It wasn’t like minimum wage or the military budget, where each party knew where they stood, and how to make compromises to make something happen.  This was something completely new, and the public was all over the map.

Why, we might have to actually lead on this one!