The Road to Roswell

To Eleanor Cameron, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Damon Knight, and all the other science fiction authors who first sparked my interest in aliens. And to Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl, who took one look at the Roswell crash and said, “It’s a weather balloon.” Contents Cover Epigraph Chapter One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen | Seventeen | Eighteen | Nineteen | Twenty | Twenty-one | Twenty-two | Twenty-three | Twenty-four Acknowledgments About the Author By Connie Willis Copyright _144052297_ The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. —Bill Watterson Be hospitable to strangers. —The Code of the West “Let me ask you something. If you were an alien—you can go anywhere in the world—would you pick Roswell?” —Roswell CHAPTER ONE Paul: Yeah, well, you’re killin’ yourself. A friend can’t be worth that. Hogy: Well now, how would you know? Did you ever have one? —The Virginian Serena wasn’t in the airport waiting area when Francie got off the plane in Albuquerque, but a man carrying a sign reading First Contact Committee—Welcome to the UFO Festival was. UFO Festival? Serena hadn’t said anything about a UFO festival going on at the same time as her wedding. Maybe it’s not in Roswell, Francie thought hopefully. But of course it was. Where else would a UFO festival be? And as if to confirm that, here came two guys in Star Trek uniforms and Spock ears, hurrying up to greet a third in a silver unitard and a gray alien mask with large black almond-shaped eyes and no nose. Thank goodness I didn’t succeed in talking Ted into being my plus-one for this wedding, she thought. Or worse, Graham. She’d tried to talk somebody, anybody, from work into coming with her so Serena wouldn’t try to fix her up with someone, but when she’d told them where the wedding was, they’d all said no. “Roswell?” Graham had said. “The place with all the UFO nut jobs?” “Why is it in Roswell?” Ted had asked. “Does your friend live there?” “No, she lives in Phoenix. They’re just having the wedding in Roswell.” “Why?” Graham said. “Why would anyone in their right mind go to Roswell?” and she’d been forced to tell them that Serena was marrying one of those selfsame UFO nut jobs, at which point both of them had not only refused to be her plus-one but told her she was crazy for going herself. “I have to,” she’d told them. “Serena asked me to be her maid of honor, and she’s one of my very best friends. She was my freshman roommate in college. We have a special bond.” “A special bond?” Graham had said. “What are you, Sisters of the Traveling Pants or something?” “No,” she’d said defensively, “but I owe her a lot. She saved my life when I was a freshman,” and tried to explain how, when she’d arrived at college in Tucson, knowing no one, homesick for New England, and shocked by the heat and barrenness of the Southwest, Serena had kept her from getting on the first plane home. She’d shown her around campus, introduced her to people, taught her what tumbleweeds and javelinas and saguaros were, and convinced her there weren’t any rattlesnakes on campus (which would definitely have sent Francie screaming back to Connecticut). And when Francie’s high school boyfriend had broken up with her two weeks later, Serena’d sat with her while she’d sobbed, told her “he wasn’t right for you at all,” and generally patched her back together. “She’s been a terrific friend,” Francie said. “Sympathetic, funny, and—” “And out of her mind if she believes all this aliens-from-outer-space garbage,” Graham had said. “I don’t know about you, but it’s my policy to avoid nut jobs, old roommates or not.” Ted nodded. “I had a roommate my sophomore year who believed birds were spying on him. You don’t catch me going to his wedding.” “She isn’t a nut job,” Francie protested. “She’s just a little…ditzy, and inclined to go along with what her boyfriends think.” And she has terrible taste in men, Francie added silently. Worse than terrible. When Francie first met her, Serena had been dating a kamikaze BASE jumper who’d wanted her to dive headfirst into the Grand Canyon with him, and her taste hadn’t improved since then. She’d dated a gun-stockpiling survivalist and a breatharian, who believed you could survive on air and positive thinking, and been engaged to a soul shaman and a stormchaser. “All the more reason not to go,” Graham had said. “You’ll just be condoning her marrying this guy.” Ted had nodded. “Definitely complicit. Unless you’re going because you want to talk her out of it,” and Graham had pounced. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re going out there to pull one of those dramatic ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ numbers, aren’t you?” She’d insisted she wasn’t, but they hadn’t believed her and had refused to listen when she’d tried to explain that she wouldn’t have to talk Serena out of it—that Serena always came to her senses and started having second thoughts herself. That’s what had happened with the stormchaser. “He thinks tornadoes are an adventure, like The Wizard of Oz or something,” she’d told Francie, “but they’re dangerous! And he expects me to drive straight into them with him!” All Francie’d had to do was stand there while Serena talked herself out of it and called the wedding off. But to have that happen, Francie had to be there to listen to her doubts and assure her she was doing the right thing. Serena counted on Francie to be her sounding board and her backup, to rescue her from making a terrible decision just like she’d rescued Francie so many times. “Friends are supposed