Lunch
I had been seconded from the London Met to the Paris Police. I knew the sought-after assignments were in forensics and firearms. As a graduate entrant who spoke French, and one of only three female entrants, I ended up with six months working with a team of chain-smoking, militant anti-Anglo-Saxons. Six months which also included the two best days of my life?
I never found out what possessed Teo and Guy, two alien princelings to visit Paris. They had planned ahead enough to have clothes and passports, of sorts. They also came furnished with gold coins and old maps. Thinking their ship was some terrorist attack the French authorities sent up fighter jets armed with heat seeking Exocet missiles. What exactly happened no-one knows, but Guy was a hot shot pilot from another star system so inevitably the aliens landed safe and sound close to Porte Dauphine in the Bois de Boulogne.
The map was sufficient for them to find a pawnshop and gold merchant est. 1688 no less. After that they shopped on the Champs Elysees before checking into the discrete yet luxurious St James, at the heart of Paris St. Germaine. The hotel took their fresh cash and recommended Alain Ducasse for lunch, so it was ‘à table’ that I first saw them.
“Qu’est qui ce passe? What’s happening?” whispered Pierre.
Pierre, Claude and I were standing on the Place de la Concord peering up at the balcony restaurant on the first tier of the Tour Eiffel: Alain Ducasse’s Le Jules Verne. This was where the St James concierge had told us we would find them.
“Ah bon Dieu!” exclaimed Claude. He was the boss. “Avez vous faim?”
So I found myself, on a graduate police officer salary, taking a place at a table with the best view of Paris. I don’t mind admitting it, I was more in awe of the waiters and silver service, than the two men presumed to be aliens at the next table. They didn’t look alien. Teo had classic golden boy looks, and was deceptively youthful and innocent. Next to me was Guy broody and fidgety, slim, dark and dangerous. Dangerous? Well yes, you see
Guy was at least partially a cyborg. He wore a glove on his right hand, but he could not conceal the chrome and steel rods of his wrists. His legs too were titanium rods clad in flesh, but I would only discover that later and very useful it would prove too.
Oh, he saw me looking…
He’s offering me a cigarette. Is smoking even permitted? Of course, I took the cigarette, and we smoked appraising each other. I saw his eyes checking Pierre and Claude as well. I think he saw their guns. He had guessed we were police?
A moment later, Teo leant over and said:
“Mademoiselle, can you show me Versailles?”
He didn’t speak English, and he didn’t speak French either. I caught a different voice but it was drowned out by a small translator, a machine the size of a credit card, repeating his words in mechanical French.
Teo offered me a map, opening it up to show the centre of Paris. I shook my head, and indicated about fifty centimetres to the right.
“Versailles, c’est ici. Not on this map at all.”
“Really?” He handed me another map. Again the scale was wrong, but at least one edge of the map bore an arrow: towards Versailles. Once again I pointed a short distance beyond the edge of the map. “Versailles, c’est loin. Too far, these maps are no good at all.”
The waiter was serving Champagne. I found myself with a glass. Behind me Claude was ordering oysters and more Champagne.
“Find out why they want to go to Versailles,” Pierre whispered.
“Versailles,” I said,“c’est très beau, mais ici à Paris vous avez le Louvre, les Tuilleries…”
“No, we wish to visit the Royal Court. I must offer my respects to your King Louis, and the regards of my father the Emperor.”
Both Pierre and I started talking at once. Over the next hour, over four dozen oysters and at least one further bottle of champagne, we provided a potted history of the French Revolution and subsequent modern history.
In return, Teo told us he was a Prince from a distant star with a gift and good wishes for the leader of the human race. “I come in peace,” he said. Claude suggested Teo made the presentation to the President of the French Republic. As Teo considered this, the Americans arrived.
We had not expected to have the aliens to ourselves for long. The American authorities had in fact provided all the intelligence about the incoming space craft and the six much larger craft parked between the Earth and the Moon.
I don’t do twitter but I gather that #aliensinparis was phenomenal in its growth and within the first few hours the YouTube video of the shuttle approach had repeated a million times on Facebook.
