Credibility

“That... is the last place in the world I expected to see a cement truck.”

The bearded reporter took a drag off his cigarette. Jon looked sideways at him; although the guy was an annoyance, he was right. It was pretty unlikely.

They stood on the rim of a very large crater, surrounded as far as the eye could see in every direction by thick three-canopy rain forest. There was not a road for at least five miles.

The truck was right in the middle of a sort of lot they’d cleared quickly the day before with chainsaws and fire. It had just enough room to turn around and back up to the opening so that it could tilt its drum up and pour out its load. It was doing that right now.

“So,” said the reporter, “What can you tell me about what’s in there?”

“Not one thing,” said Jon. “I’m not even sure how you managed to get here. The last thing we need is publicity.”

“I walked,” said the bearded guy. “Followed the helicopter with a cement truck dangling from it.” He dropped the cigarette on the forest floor, ground it out under a boot. “Listen, like it or not, I’m here, which means that it’s going to get some play. It’s up to you whether the story is ‘Secret US Government Cement Pouring Mission In The Jungle’ or...” He waved at the hole. “Whatever that is.”

Jon gave the man a cool look. Five miles of the most rugged, dangerous jungle in the world, full of poisonous spiders and man-eating jaguars and uncontacted blowgun-wielding tribesmen and not one of them had seen fit to happen to this guy. It seemed unfair.

“So unless you’re planning to lock me away in some black-site hole, you might as well give me your side of the story.”

Jon raised one eyebrow. The black-site idea was exactly what he’d been thinking about. He wondered how you managed to arrange that sort of thing. He sighed. He’d probably used up all the juice he had with the United States Government arranging for the cement truck.

Then he suddenly grinned. The reason it had been so hard to drum up the response was... well. What the fuck, he’d tell the guy, and then see what writing it did to his credibility as a journalist.

He turned to face the man full on, his face a manic mix of the exhaustion he felt after the last couple of days and the sudden realization that he was about to wreck the career of someone who deeply irritated him.

“Aliens,” he said.