Alien Upstairs by Pamela Sargent Page A

or joking. He was just drawing more attention to himself."
    "But who would believe it?"
    "I know at least one person who believed it. I met her at the party. She told me Raf and his people were going to bail us out.” She saw a smooth stretch ahead, and accelerated.
    "Well,” Gerard murmured, “I guess we believe it, too, or we wouldn't be out here."
    "I don't know what I believe.” Sarah glanced at him, then returned her attention to the road. A bus, led by a jeep, was traveling on the northbound highway. Refugees, she thought. Few people went north now; she wondered where they would go.
    The tops of the hills, still hidden, had been swallowed by the sky. The car bounced over another crack. “It might be true, you know,” Gerard said. “Maybe Raf is going to help us. Things don't have to be this way. He must see that. Everything could change. Instead of just hanging on like this, people could be doing things."
    "What about the weather?"
    "What about it? This kind of change has happened before, you know that. People have to find new ways of getting things done, that's all. We've lost our nerve."
    Sarah held the wheel more tightly.
    "When things started getting bad, what we should have done was pressed ahead, and instead we retreated. We could have had new power sources, we could have done more research, instead of cutting back. I'm not saying we can control everything, but..."
    She drove to the side of the road and stopped, then leaned against the wheel. She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking.
    "Sarah.” He reached for her arm.
    She pulled away from him. “I don't want to think about it.” Her voice shook. “It's easier just to live with things the way they are. It doesn't do any good to hope, it just makes everything worse. I want to be happy with what I've got, I'm sick of wanting more."
    "I was just saying—"
    "I don't care. You don't believe it, anyway. You're hanging on to your job, you're not taking chances. You dropped out of school, the same as I did, because you knew you'd never be able to do anything you really wanted. We don't matter, we can't do anything about the world. So why talk about it?"
    "I wasn't talking about us. I was just mentioning things in general."
    "You were talking about us."
    She turned the key and restarted the car. They traveled in silence for a few minutes until Gerard said, “Rob was telling me about his fortress the other day."
    Sarah did not reply.
    "He has it all designed. He figures he'll find some land that nobody's using, and he'll put his house on that, but he'll build it underground, so nobody'll see it there from a distance. Then he and his brother'll start moving all their books into it, and then stock the place with food. He said even with the weather, they should be able to grow some crops. He's working on a greenhouse design, too."
    Sarah had heard about Rob's plans before. “A greenhouse, huh?"
    "Yeah. All his friends'll each get one wing of the house, and he'll build it in the shape of a rectangle, and, right in the middle, he'll have a swimming pool, so we'll all get plenty of exercise. Of course, he'll have to make it an indoor pool. Then we'll arm ourselves, and learn how to use weapons."
    "Of course."
    "Now he says he has to work on his society."
    "His society?"
    "All decisions would be made communally, he says, except for stuff that would have to be decided by experts in those areas. He says you could be the historian; you'd record everything that happens in the community, and there'd be a record for future generations."
    She laughed. “Rob, of course, would be the leader."
    "He says there wouldn't be just one leader. Everyone would work together."
    "There's always a leader."
    "Well, maybe there is, but everyone would be able to have a say, even the kids. There wouldn't be any television except for recordings of classic films, and the school's curriculum would concentrate on agriculture and