The Alien Years (19 page)

“Cindy, yes. My uncle’s wife. A little on the eccentric side.”

“She sure was. What a weird woman! Went right up to the aliens, and she was like, ‘Hi, I’m Cindy, I want to welcome you to our planet.’ Just like they were long-lost friends.”

“To her they probably seemed that way.”

“I thought she was outrageous. A lunatic, too.”

“I never cared for her very much myself,” said Ronnie. “Not that I knew her very well, or wanted to. And my father—he absolutely
loathed
her. So the invasion hasn’t been such a bad thing for him, has it? In one stroke he gets rid of his sister-in-law Cindy and is reconciled with his rogue son Ronnie.”

Peggy seemed to think about that for a moment.

“Are you really such a rogue, then?” she asked.

He grinned. “Through and through, top to bottom. But I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am, like some people have red hair and freckles.”

A second point of light appeared, elongated, streaked across the sky to the north.

She shivered against him.

“Where are they going? What are they doing?”

“Nobody knows. Nobody knows the first goddamned thing about them.”

“I hate it that they’re here. I’d give everything to have them go back where they came from.”

“Me too,” he said. She was still shivering. He pivoted ninety degrees and bent from the hips until his face was opposite hers, and kissed her in a tentative way, and then, as she began to respond, uncertainly at first and then with enthusiasm, got less tentative about it, a good deal less tentative. Quite a good deal less.

And now it was Christmas Eve, and they had had their festive dinner just as though everything was right in the world, plenty of turkey for all and the proper trimmings and any number of bottles from the Colonel’s stock of quite decent Napa Valley wines. And then, when a glossy after-dinner glow had come over everybody, the Colonel stood up and announced, “All right, now. It’s time to get down to brass tacks, folks.”

Anse, who had been expecting this moment since his arrival but in the past thirty-six hours had not managed to garner a single clue about what was coming, sat up tensely, wholly sober even though he had allowed himself an extra glass or two of wine. The others appeared less attentive. Carole, sitting opposite Anse, had a glazed look of satiation. His brother-in-law Doug Gannett, untidy and uncouth as always, seemed actually to be asleep. Rosalie might have been dozing too. Anse’s unhappy cousin Helena seemed several million miles away, as usual. Her brother Paul, ever vigilant for her, was watching her warily. Anse noticed disapprovingly that Ronnie, wide-awake but looking even more than usually flushed from all the wine he had had, was nuzzling up against Peggy Gabrielson, who did not appear to mind.

The Colonel said, launching right into things in a crisp, overly fluent way that suggested that these were well- rehearsed words, “I think you all know that I’ve moved quite some distance out of retirement since the beginning of the invasion crisis. I’m active in Southern California liberation-front circles and I’m in touch, as much as it’s possible to be, with sectors of the former national government that still are operating in various eastern states. Contact is very iffy, you know. But news does reach me from time to time about what’s going on back there. For example, to cite the most spectacular example: within the past five weeks New York City has been completely shut down and sealed off.”

“Shut—down—and—sealed—off?” Anse said. ‘You mean, some kind of travel interdiction?”

“A very total one. The George Washington Bridge—that’s the one across the Hudson River—has been severed at the Manhattan end. The bridges within the city have been blocked in one way and another also. The subway system is
kaput.
The various tunnels from New Jersey have been plugged. There are walls across the highways at the northern end of the city. Et cetera. The airports, of course, haven’t been functioning for quite some time. The overall effect is to isolate the place completely from the rest of the country.”

“What about the people who live there?” Ronnie asked. “New York City isn’t a great farming area. What are they going to be eating from now on? Each other?”

“So far as I’m aware,” the Colonel said, “pretty much the whole population of New York is now living in the surrounding states. They were given three days’ notice to evacuate, and apparently most of them did.”

Anse whisded. “Jesus! The mother of all traffic jams!”

“Exactly. A few hundred thousand people were either physically incapable of leaving or simply didn’t believe the Entities were serious, and they’re still in there, where I suppose they’ll gradually starve. The rest, seven million suddenly homeless people, are living in refugee camps in New Jersey and Connecticut, or as squatters wherever they find vacant housing, or in tents, or however they can. You can imagine the scene back there.” The Colonel paused to let them imagine it; and then, just in case they weren’t up to the job, added, “Utter chaos, of course. More or less an instant reversion to barbarism and savagery.”

Doug Gannett, who, as it turned out, had not been asleep, said now, “It’s true. I got the story from a hacker in Cleveland. People are killing each other right and left to find food and shelter. Plus it’s twenty degrees back there now and snowing every third day and thousands are freezing to death in the woods. But there’s nothing we can do about any of this stuff, can we? It’s not our problem. So frankly I don’t understand why you’re bringing it up right here and now, Colonel Carmichael, all this depressing stuff right after such a nice fine meal,” Doug finished, his voice turning puzzled and morose and a little truculent.

The Colonel’s lip-corners crinkled ever so minutely, the gesture that Anse knew was the outward sign of scathing disapproval verging on disgust, within. The old man had never been good at disguising the disdain and even contempt he felt for his daughter’s husband, a slovenly and shambling man who was said to be a cracker-jack computer programmer, but who in no other way had demonstrated any kind of worthiness in the Colonel’s eyes. In thirteen years Doug had not figured out anything better to call his father-in-law than “Colonel Carmichael,” either.

The Colonel said, “What if they were to do the same thing to Los Angeles? Give everybody from Santa Monica east to Pasadena and from Mulholland Drive south to Palos Verdes and Long Beach a couple of days to clear out, let’s say, and then interdict all the freeways and cut the place off totally from the surrounding counties.”

There were gasps of shock. There were cries of incredulity.

“Do you have any information that this is about to take place, Dad?” Ronnie asked.

“As a matter of fact, no. Or I would have brought the whole thing up a long time ago. But there’s no reason why it can’t happen—next month, next week, tomorrow. They’ve already made a start on it, you know. I doubt that I need to remind you that Highway IOI’s been shut down near Thousand Oaks for the past six months, north and south, concrete walls right across it both ways. Suppose they decided to do that everywhere else. Just consider what it would be like: a tremendous chaotic migration of refugees, everybody looking out for himself and to hell with the consequences. A million people go west to Malibu and Topanga, and a million more cross into Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks, and all the rest of them head for Orange County. Into Costa Mesa, Anse and Carole. Into Newport Beach, Rosalie, Doug. Huntington Beach. Even all the way down to La Jolla, Ronnie. What will it be like? You haven’t forgotten the Troubles, have you? This will be ten times worse.”

Anse said, “What are you trying to tell us, Dad?”

“That I see a New York-style catastrophe shaping up for Los Angeles, and I want all of you to move up here to the ranch before it happens.”

Anse had never before seen them all look so nonplussed. There were slack jaws all over the room, wide eyes, bewildered faces, astonished murmurs.

The Colonel overrode it all. His voice was as firm and strong as Anse had ever heard it.

“Listen to me. We have plenty of space here, and there are outbuildings that can easily be converted to additional residential units. We have our own well. With a little sweat we can make ourselves self-sufficient so far as food goes: we can grow any crop except the really tropical ones, and there’s no reason why all this good land has to be given over to almonds and walnuts. Also our position up here on the side of the mountain is a good strategic one, easily fortified and defended. We—”

“Hold it, Dad. Please.”

“Just a minute, Anse. I’m not done.”

“Please. Let me say something, first.” Anse didn’t wait for permission. “Are you seriously asking us to abandon our houses, our jobs, our
lives—”

“What jobs? What lives?” There was a sudden whip-crack tone in the Colonel’s voice. “Since the Troubles you’ve all been improvising, every bit of the time. There isn’t one of you, is there, who’s still got the same job they had the day before the Entities came. Or goes about any other part of their daily life in remotely the same way. So it isn’t as if you’re clinging to well-loved established routines. And what about your houses? Those nice pretty suburban houses of yours, Anse, Rosalie, Paul, Helena? With the whole population of central Los Angeles flooding down your way to look for a place to sleep, and everybody angry because their neighborhood got sealed off and yours didn’t, what’s going to become of your cute little towns? No. No. What’s just ahead for us is going to be infinitely worse than anything that occurred during the Troubles. It’s going to be like a Richter Nine earthquake, I warn you. I want you here, where you’ll be safe, when that happens.”

Helenar who had been widowed at twenty-two in the fury of the Troubles, and who had not even begun in the intervening two years to come to terms with her loss, now started to sob. Rosalie and Doug were staring at each other in consternation. Their pudgy son Steve seemed stunned; he looked as though he wanted to crawl under the table. The only ones in the room who appeared completely calm were Peggy Gabrielson, who surely had known in advance that this was what the Colonel had in mind, and Ronnie, whose face was a bland, noncommittal poker-player’s mask.

Anse looked toward his wife. Panic was visible in her eyes. Leaning across to him, Carole whispered, “He’s gone completely around the bend, hasn’t he? You’ve got to do something, Anse. Get him to calm down.”

“I’m afraid he
is
calm,” Anse said. “That’s the problem.”

Paul Carmichael, with one comforting arm across his sister’s shoulders, said, levelheaded as always, “I don’t have any doubt, Uncle Anson, that we’ll be better off up here if the same thing takes place in Los Angeles that you say was done in New York. But just how likely a possibility is that? The Entities could shut down New York just by cutting half a dozen transportation arteries. Closing off Los Angeles would be a lot more complicated.”

The Colonel nodded. He moistened his lips thoughtfully.

“It would be, yes. But they could do it if they wanted to. I don’t know whether they do: nobody does. Let me tell you, though, one further thing that may affect your decision. Or at least I’ll partly tell you.”

That was too cryptic. There were frowns all over the room.

The Colonel said, “As I told you, I’ve been more active in the Resistance than I’ve let you know, and thus I happen to be privy to a great deal of information that circulates in Resistance circles. I don’t intend to share any classified details with you, obviously. But what I
can
tell you is that certain factions within the Resistance are considering making a very serious attempt at a military strike against an Entity compound right after the new year. It’s a rash and stupid and very dangerous idea and I hope to God that it never comes to pass. But if it does, it will certainly fail, and then the Entities will beyond any doubt retaliate severely, and may the Lord help us all, then. Chaos beyond belief will be the result and you, wherever you may be at the time, will wish that you had taken me up on my offer to move up here. That’s all I’m going to say. The rest is up to you.”

He looked around the room, steely-eyed, fierce, almost defiant, every inch the commanding officer.

“Well?”

The Colonel was looking straight at Anse. The oldest, the favorite. But Anse did not know what to say. Were things really going to be as apocalyptic as this? He respected the old man’s concern for them. But even now, after all that had taken place, he could not bring himself to believe that the roof was going to fall in on Los Angeles like that. And he felt a powerful inner opposition to the idea of giving up whatever was left of the life he had made for himself down there in Orange County, uprooting the whole family on the Colonel’s mere say-so and holing up like hermits on this mountainside. Settling in here with his father and his slippery rascal of a brother and all the rest of them. Fort Carmichael, they could call it.

He sat silent, stymied, stuck.

Then came a cheerful voice from the corner:

“I’m with you, Dad. This is the only place to be. I’ll go home right after Christmas and pack up my stuff and get myself back here before the first of the year.”

Ronnie.

Uttering words that fell on the astounded Anse like thunderbolts.
This is the only place to be.

Even the Colonel seemed momentarily dumbfounded to realize that Ronnie, of all people, had been the first one to agree. He, of all people, scurrying back ahead of the others to the parental nest. But he made a quick recovery.