“Which one of the men is Dante?” shouted another reporter.
“Dante is the man standing at the middle table. Quentin, do you mind switching places with your brother?”
“No problem,” Quentin grinned, going over to the other table to take Dante’s place. Dante took his brother’s vacated seat next to me.
“Dante, how far is your range?” someone asked.
“I do not know,” Dante said.
“Speak up louder,” another person shouted.
Dante repeated his words with more volume.
“Any volunteers to help him find the answer to that?” I asked the watching crowd.
A surprisingly large number of hands went up, including some from the restaurant staff. I chose a male waiter and beckoned him over to come stand in front of Dante.
“Why don’t we start at a distance of five feet,” I suggested.
“You think my range is greater than yours?” Dante said, smiling faintly.
“I’m pretty sure it is,” I said, smiling back, and suggested he have him sing “Happy Birthday.”
“Try to resist him,” I told the volunteer.
“Believe me, ma’am,” the waiter said, “I will. I don’t have any singing talent, at all.”
There were a lot of audible gasps as Dante’s pale eyes turned solid silver and began to glow. He gave his command.
The waiter started singing, loudly and robustly and as awfully as he had claimed.
He stopped when Dante told him to, and was released from the compulsion.
Following instructions, the waiter took one more step back. Standing six feet back, this time he was able to resist Dante’s efforts. “Jesus Christ,” he yelped when Dante’s eyes changed color. “Look at his eyes!”
“It seems like six feet for you, Dante, as your maximum range.” I thanked the waiter and quietly asked him to bring me the check for the three tables.
“Are we leaving?” Dante asked.
“No. They seemed to take that well, but I thought it best to pay before I forgot. Or in case we have to leave in a sudden hurry.”
I told the reporters we were done with the demonstration, but added that we would be happy to speak more with them on an individual basis, whereupon they flocked back around each table. We chatted with reporters for another thirty minutes, but unfortunately none of the watching crowd left. They stayed and more people joined them until a thick mass stood beyond the perimeter the police had established around us.
An FBI agent approached our table, stopping a carefully measured seven feet away. “Ma’am, you should probably end this now. We would be happy to let you continue if there weren’t so many people around, but the crowd is getting too large.”
“I was just noticing that myself,” I told him. Then asked, “Are you going to just let us leave?”
“Yes. We’ll even escort you out of here, if you allow us.” Cameras were rolling, recording our interaction, microphones held out to pick up our conversation.
“No orders to take us into custody?”
“Very specific orders not to unless you act aggressively and give us reason to.”
“We won’t. We’re here as peaceful envoys.”
“Then it might be best, for your own safety, if you can avoid any more of these, uh, open, public gatherings. Large crowds can all too easily get out of hand.”
“So what do you suggest?” I asked. “Private interviews with the media?”
The man nodded and said to my surprise, “Yes. Our department’s media liaison would be happy to make the arrangements for you.”
“Thank you but there’s no need,” I said, politely declining the offer. No way was I going to let the FBI arrange meetings for us in places where they could easily trap us. “I’ll try and do as you suggested, though. What is your name?”
“Jim Carmichael. I’m the FBI agent in charge.”
He was older than the other agents, fit and lean with dark, serious eyes. Responsibility seemed to rest easily on his shoulders. “I like you much better than Agent Stanton,” I told him.
“That’s good to hear, ma’am.”
His words caused a painful wince. “Please don’t ma’am me. I have to be at least ten years younger than you.”
“How old are you?” he asked in a direct and yet still polite manner.
“I’m twenty-one.” They had to have all my data by now.
“How would you like me to address you then?”
“Mona Lisa will do.”
“Mona Lisa, then. I’d appreciate it if you could wrap things up.”
“No problem.” Dante had taken care of the bill.
“Would you want us to escort you through the crowd?” Agent Carmichael asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, standing. “We’ll take the quick and easy way out of here.”
I called for everyone’s attention, thanked them for their time and interest, announced that we were leaving, and suggested that they do so as well. In a lower voice, I said, “Okay, everyone, grab your stuff. Jarvis, if you could get Kelly.”
The reporters fell back as we all stood and gathered our things. Two yards away from the loose perimeter, I gathered myself and leaped, sailing over everyone’s head, twenty feet, thirty feet . . . landing behind the watching crowd a short distance away in the parking lot. Amber thudded lightly down beside me, the others following closely behind.
With a last jaunty wave to the crowd, we sped away.
EPILOGUE
THAT NIGHT, WE Started returning the messages that various members of the media had left with McManus. Most weren’t available so late in the evening, but a surprising number were and took our phone calls. Quentin played secretary, using a newly purchased notebook to begin scheduling interviews.
The next morning, we sat and talked with Harry and five other attorneys from his law firm. We spent the first half hour of the meeting discussing exactly what the Monère were, which was, technically, a nonhuman alien species, even though Monère had lived here on this continent before the word America was even coined. But aside from the messy legal issues of proof backing up our earlier settlement on this land, which we did not have as far as I knew, and the even trickier question of biology, our legal experts decided that the best approach was to seek American citizenship. Even a monkey would be granted basic human rights once it became a citizen, they said.
And McManus was right. These guys were far more expensive than he was, to the collective tune of two hundred thousand dollars for their services, which would include finding a senator or congressman who would be willing to sponsor and initiate a bill in Congress, on behalf of the Monère.
If and when the bill was passed in Congress, it would then go to the Senate floor. If and when that bill was passed in the Senate, the President would then have to sign off on it before it became official law. Lots of ifs and whens and other tricky steps involved, not the least of which was a congressional hearing that I and the others would likely have to testify at. Wagner and his politically savvy team of lawyers and experts would shepherd us through this entire complicated process. Oh, and the price he quoted was only an estimate; it might go as high as three hundred thousand dollars, depending on how much money they needed to grease the wheels to win the support of key people.
Politics, I discovered, was a very high-priced business.
I called the two other law firms on my list, with a much clearer understanding of what services I needed, and browbeat them into giving me a rough quote over the telephone. They gave close to the same figure. We signed with Wagner’s law firm. They were supposed to be the best, something I comforted myself with as I forked over a hundred thousand dollars to them, the first chunk of their payment. I remembered to get a receipt.
Barbara Walters wanted us to fly out to New York for an interview on her show, The View. So did Diane Sawyer for Good Morning America, Matt Lauer for the Today Show, and Regis and Kelly. On the west coast, Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres were also eager to get us on their shows. I told Quentin that we were staying put, and asked to have them come to us instead. The west coast shows ended up interviewing us via satellite out of a local DC studio, as did Regis and Kelly. Barbara Walters, Matt Lauer, and Diane Sawyer, however, flew out to DC to interview us in person. But, hey, if it only takes an hour flight from New York to DC, why not, right?