some people mark that moment as the dawning of the age.

He didn't look human, Roni Tahr. But he didn't look so alien then, either.

A child on the sidewalk gasped at the sight of Roni Tahr.

"He's beautiful." the child said.

"Is he a person, Mommy? A people person, like you and me and Daddy are?"

His mother hesitated, but she knew the answer all the same.

"Of course he is, Patrick," the mother said.

"Never let yourself think otherwise--a person is a person no matter who they are."

Roni Tahr heard all of that, and smiled at the . woman.

"We come in peace," he said.

"We come to know your world, and cherish it and you."

She was wrong, of course. There were doubters then, and there are doubters now; even her own son had doubted till she'd set him straight.

But for all that she was wrong, still she spoke a fundamental truth: none could see Roni Tahr without that same stirring of the heart. To see him truly is a spiritual wonder; and while it's true that there are those whose hearts breed hatred deeper than the sea, it's also true that those folks see and love him, too, no matter how they find the rage to loathe him equally or more.

By the time Roni Tahr reached the sidewalk, there were television cameras focused on him, watching; a crowd had already begun to line the streets that led from the landing site on Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Four other aliens--a.s.sistants, disciples, or bodyguards;

no one is certain--four other aliens followed Roni Tahr to the White House from his landing craft.

Their names were Ileja, Kure, Orogarn, and Mathos, but little more is known of them.

"They're having a parade. Mommy," the little boy called, And in a way it was like a parade: the crowd pulled away from the street to line the sidewalk, just as it might line a parade route; despite the hour, traffic cleared from Pennsylvania Avenue in both directions, as far as the eye could see.

Roni Tahr and his four shadowy companions strode easily toward the White House, waving to the onlookers, taking in the welcome and the joy that held the city---till they reached the White House gates, and found their way barred by three dozen of the Secret Service.

"I'm sorry, sir," the senior agent said, hat in hand, shamefaced.

"We can't allow you to proceed."

Roni Tahr frowned, and nodded sadly.

"I understand," he said.

"Duty calls us all."

His English was remarkable: utterly unaccented in any way, but colored by a lilt that brought exotic circ.u.mstance to mind, a sound that warmed the heart and filled it with all possibility and prospects for the age.

And then the President himself arrived at the gate, followed by his minions.

"Sam," he called, "That isn't necessary, Sam. I'd like to greet these gentlemen myself."

The President smiled the facile homespun and half sincere smile that was his trademark, and now the Secret Service stood aside.

We know this about the President's meeting with Roni Tahr, because there were witnesses: We know that the President escorted Roni Tahr and his companions into the White House, and showed him many things: the Oval Office; the famous halls and meeting places. Offices of great officers and small;

map rooms, situation rooms.

The president's own quarters, ultimately.

We know that they broke bread together, and went on to share a meal, We know that their conversation ran long and genial, into the night.

Till finally near midnight the President and Roni Tahr dismissed the aides who'd dined with them, and the President led Roni Tahr into a secure and solitary room, where the two of them spoke privately at length and in substance about the future of the world--and so many things beyond it.

No one knows for certain what was said within those walls, for the room was impossibly secure, and there were no witnesses but the President himself and Roni Tahr.

But there are records from the White House purser that suggest the general form of their discussion: At three o'clock in the morning the President had his valet bring them coffee; at half past four he woke the chef to bring them cognac and fine Dominican cigars.

At five, Roni Tahr rejoined his companions, and the five of them left the White House in a Presidential limousine that took them across the street and through the gathered crowd to the Hotel Washington.

There they took possession of an extensive suite of rooms two floors below the Penthouse, where they rested undisturbed seven hours, seven minutes, and seven seconds.

Undisturbed because a thousand Marines and Secret Service men stood guard in the corridor outside their suite.

When Roni Tahr emerged at last, three Secret Servicemen led him to a room where a dozen junior agents had set up operations to screen their calls.

"You're going to need help, sir," the senior agent said, "to weed through the ma.s.s of folks who want to talk to you. Some of them--I think you'll want to talk to some of them. You've come to Earth to meet us, haven't you? There are people here you'll want to see, places that you'll want to go. But you can't deal with all of them yourself--there are just too many folks who want to talk to you."

"There is no need," said Roni Tahr.

"We will contact those we must--they have no need to seek us out."

Roni Tahr was as good as his word, of course. When he appeared on the news, he came to us deliberately, in the hour and on the segment of his own choosing; when he spoke to Sam Donaldson on the White House lawn it was at his own instigation--indeed, he took Donaldson and his camera crew entirely off guard, for though they had tried mightily to reach him, their effort had gone unavailing.

When Roni Tahr appeared before the United Nations, that, too, came at his own moment, at his own direction; he came unheralded and unannounced into the Security Council, and regardless of the sentries who sought to bar his way. And then he stood before the captains of the world and spoke peace, without waiting to hear what they might say in turn.

He didn't give them orders, instructions, or directions;

he greeted them and offered him his observations of those first days upon our world.

He told them things about our world we always knew but never dared admit to ourselves.

In those first days of the age, Roni Tahr spoke to each of the news organizations, answering their questions, basking in their curiosity.

The talk shows all lamented that he would not speak to them, but that hardly gave them pause, in the end--for they were much freer to speak of him when they did not know him than they ever could have been had they interviewed the alien directly.

As on the talk shows and the nets, we all shouted furiously at one another, each of us certain that we and we alone knew the nature of the creature who had come to walk among us.

We each came to our own conclusions, in the end.

And who could say if that was accident or design?

No one could--or should.

Cameras followed Roni Tahr and his disciples everywhere; we all watched him hours and hours every day. Telephoto lenses and directional microphones allowed all of us to hang for hours on his every word, live on CSpan 4; no one could ever say we did not know great Roni Tahr before his disappearance.

We saw him spend long hours--whole days at a time--taking in our world, one neighborhood at a time; we all saw him walk the benighted streets of Washington, till the cameramen grew weary and the Secret Service on the street wearied of its charge?

Watching people on the streets; gazing up into the shattered windows of the towering apartment-project buildings.

And who ever could forget the sight of Roni Tahr when the child fell from her decrepit bicycle to wound her brow against the pavement? That great slight and powerful alien frame stooping to lift the child in his arms. Whispering sweet comforts to the child as he carried her to her home, up the stairs, through the hall where vermin scattered noisome in their wake; into her apartment where her mother grieved and cried and worried at the wound as she tended to her child.

The cameras caught all of that, and no one who has seen those tapes ever will forget them.

What days those were! All the nation's scandals and disgraces; the turpitudes of nations and the ignominy of regions vast and small; the wars that plagued the world with battle, pestilence, and slaughter--all those things grew small before the eye, and vanished from the mind; in an hour a day, a week those things all vanished from the earth for inattention as surely as they'd vanished from our hearts.

As the world watched Roni Tahr.

Now here at last there was Peace in Our Time, because the things that set us against ourselves had made themselves too petty to contemplate.

For an hour, a day, a week as we watched Roni Tahr explore our world, the world was as it always should have been.

And then, a week and a day after he'd come to us, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds kidnapped Roni Tahr.

And changed the world forever in ways that not even Roni Tahr could ever have foreseen.

No camera saw the kidnappers perform their vile work. No witnesses described them; not one onlooker saw anything untoward. Even to this day the kidnapping of Roni Tahr remains a mystery: how did the xenophobic zealots find their way into the Hotel Washington? How could they begin to make their way into the suites the aliens occupied, past a good thousand Marines and Secret Service men?

And how in all the worlds there ever were or will he did they sneak Roni Tahr and his four companions out of their quarters without attracting the attention of the police, the guards, the soldiers--for G.o.d's sake, how could they ever have got past the hundreds of reporters and cameramen who waited inside and outside the hotel?

No one imagines an answer to that question. There are no answers to he had.

But we know this much: we know that the hotel steward entered the alien suite at six forty-five in the morning, Washington time, to set out clean towels, prepare the aliens' breakfast, and generally make ready for the new day And what he found inside that suite was chaos of the highest order.

Furniture crushed, broken, scattered hither and yon about the suite; bullet holes and bloodstains in and on the walls; deep stains and singes in the carpet.

And the whole place reeked--not the outre foetor we all recognize from our encounters with the aliens, but something nastier- More feral, and endlessly more primal: the suit stank of burned and rotting human flesh.

Stank powerfully--overwhelmingly, in fact; the odor was so vile and so forceful that from the moment that the steward opened the door to the suite, no one in the hall could mistake it.