The Alien Years Read Online Free PDF Page B

know how to cope with fires in this state. I’m more interested in these E-Ts. What the devil do you suppose they are? This isn’t all just some kind of movie stunt, is it?”
    “I don’t think so, Dad.”
    “No. Neither do I, really. Nobody’s that dumb, to set half of L.A. on fire for a publicity event. I hear that they’re in New York and London and a lot of other places too.”
    “Washington?” Anse asked.
    “Haven’t heard anything about Washington,” said the Colonel. “Haven’t heardanything from Washington, either. Odd that the President hasn’t been on the air yet.”
    “You don’t think they’ve captured him, do you, Dad?”
    He didn’t sound serious. The Colonel laughed. “This is all so crazy, isn’t it? Men from Mars marching through our cities. —No, I don’t suppose they’ve captured him. I figure he must be stashed away somewhere very deep, having an extremely lively meeting with the National Security Council. Wouldn’t you say so?”
    “We don’t have any kind of contingency plans for alien invasions, so far as I know,” Anse said. “But I’m not up on that sort of stuff these days.” Anse had been an officer in the Army’s materiel-procurement arm, but he had left the Service about two years back, tempted away by a goodly aerospace-industry paycheck. The Colonel hadn’t been too pleased about that. After a moment Anse said, sounding a little uncomfortable, as he always did when he said something he didn’t really believe for no other reason than that he suspected the Colonel wanted to hear it, “Well, if it’s war with Mars, or wherever it is they come from, so be it. I’m ready to go back in, if I’m needed.”
    “So am I. I’m not too old. If I spoke Martian, I’d volunteer my services as an interpreter. But I don’t, and nobody’s been calling me for my advice so far, either.”
    “They should,” Anse said.
    “Yes,” the Colonel said, perhaps a little too vehemently. “They really should.”
    There was silence at the other end for a moment. They were treading on dangerous territory. The Colonel had been reluctant to leave the Service, even after putting in his thirty years, and had never ceased regretting his retirement; Anse had scarcely hesitated, the moment he was eligible to claim his own.
    Anse said, finally, “You want to hear one more crazy thing, Dad? I think I caught a glimpse of Gindy on the news this morning, in the crowd at the Porter Ranch mall.”
    “Cindy?”
    “Or her twin sister, if she has one. Looked just like her, that was for sure. There were five, six hundred people standing outside the entrance of the Wal-Mart watching the E-Ts go walking by, and for a second the camera zoomed down and I was sure I saw Cindy right in the front row. With her eyes as bright as a kid’s on Christmas morning. I was certain it was her.”
    “Porter Ranch, that’s up beyond Northridge, isn’t it? What would she have been doing out there early in the morning when she lives way to hell and gone east of there and south, the other side of Mulholland?”
    “The hair was just like hers, dark, cut in bangs. And big earrings, the hoops she always wears. —Well, maybe not. But I wouldn’t put it past her, going up to that mall to look at the E-Ts.”
    “It would have been cordoned off right away, the moment the critters arrived,” the Colonel said, while the thought went through his mind that she should have been at her gallery in Santa Monica by this time of morning, and hadn’t been there. “Not likely that the police would have been letting rubberneckers in. You must have been mistaken. Someone else, similar appearance.”
    “Maybe so.—Mike’s out of town, right? The back end of New Mexico, again?”
    “Yes,” said the Colonel. “Supposed to be getting back today. I called his house but I got no answer. If he’s back already, I suspect he’s gone out on volunteer fire duty the way he does every year. Right in the thick of things, I