Kaiju Agonistes

October, 1972

“You are leaving here in handcuffs, ma’am. Handcuffs! That is the end of this ridiculous matter!”

“You can have the Secret Service do whatever they want to me. I can’t personally resist. But if my liberty is curtailed in any way, my client will take a leisurely swim up the Potomac and you’re going to have to find a new house, Mr. President. It’s lurking not far from here. I know you’re aware that it walked across Panama a few days ago.”

Aldrich-Haines is wearing a gleaming black dress that looks knitted from the stuff they make spy planes out of. With a start, the president realizes it resembles the carapace of the thing he met on Likiep Atoll. That thing made it for her.

“Your collusion with that entity, Ms. Aldrich-Haines, raises more legal questions than I can imagine, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it might go as far as high treason.”

“I am now Messenger’s sole authorized representative for all affairs legal, political, and financial on this planet, Mr. President. So while I intend to maintain my New York domicile and pay my income taxes, all the broader questions of citizenship and allegiance just went weird and you know it. If anything happens to me, my client the skyscraper-sized alien monster will start smashing things again. It’s that simple, Dick. Let’s cut the shit.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Could it have something to do with that time you pretended to consider my proposals and flew me to the middle of the Pacific—”

“I didn’t pretend anything, ma’am! I gave you genuine consideration!”

“You undercut me, Mr. President. I was ignored and silenced. Henry Kissinger kicked me into a lagoon. Then you had me detained for three weeks. Well, so what? Shake off the dust from your feet, and so forth. All I wanted to do at first was make some money and give you a public opinion turnaround. Now I have a client who takes my proposals seriously, which means the whole world is going to take them seriously.”

“Unbelievable. A megalomaniac soap jingle lady.”

“Actually, I never worked on soap jingles, Mr. President. I worked on applied psychology in public relations, just as I’m doing now. Changing minds professionally.”

“No credentials concerning that monster will ever be recognized in this country,” says the president. “No extraordinary status will ever be conferred to you or anyone who takes your place when you depart for federal prison.”

“Mr. President, you know my client will target you personally in retaliation. Stop pretending you don’t speak English.”

“You cannot threaten me, ma’am!”

“Can,” says Eugenia Aldrich-Haines. “Am. Get a space monster of your own if you don’t want to play ball, Dick.” She pulls a sheaf of papers out of her gleaming black bag (God, thinks the president before he can help himself, a literal Messenger bag) and tosses them onto his desk. “Here’s the basic structure of how we’re going to run things. Page one is your eyes only, for the moment.”

“Jesus.” As he reads, the president feels every individual blood vessel in his eyeballs preparing to burst. “Jesus, lady!”

“Just so you understand that we don’t want to have to resort to physical violence, no matter how easy it would be. You know Messenger can manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum. If you don’t start convening the meetings we require, my client will jam every radio broadcast on the Eastern seaboard, and on those frequencies it will broadcast the words ‘Dick Nixon can’t get it up’ twenty-four hours a day until the election. That’ll go into the history books, Mr. President.”

“This is unseemly. No matter what sort of personal humiliation you concoct, you turncoat bitch, my position on that monster’s demands must remain immutable!”

“Well, I have good news. Messenger wants to cease operating primarily through demands. Starting immediately, we’re going to put down the stick and offer the whole world a tasty bite of carrot.”