The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg Page A

Trying to become something more than she was. That was how they had fallen in love in the first place, an unlikely couple, she with her beads and sandals, he with his steady no-nonsense view of the world: she had come up to him that day long ago when he was in the record shop in Studio City, and God only knew what he was doing in that part of the world in the first place, and she had asked him something and they had started to talk, and they had talked and talked, talked all night, she wanting to know everything there was to know about him, and when dawn came up they were still together and they had rarely been parted since. He never had really been able to understand what it was that she had wanted him for—the Central Valley redneck, the aging flyboy—although he felt certain that she wanted him for something real, that he filled some need for her, as she did for him, which could for lack of a more specific term be called love. She had always been searching for that, too. Who wasn’t? And he knew that she loved him truly and well, though he couldn’t quite see why. “Love is understanding,” she liked to say. “Understanding is loving.” Was she trying to tell the spaceship people about love right this minute? Cindy, Cindy, Cindy—
     
    The Colonel’s phone bleeped again. He grabbed for it, eager and ready for his brother’s voice.
    Wrong again. Not Mike. This was a hearty booming unfamiliar voice, one that said, “Anson? Anson Carmichael? Lloyd Buckley here!”
    “I’m sorry,” the Colonel said, a little too quickly. “I’m afraid I don’t know—”
    Then he placed the name, and his heart began to pound, and a prickle of excitement began running up and down his back.
    “Calling from Washington.”
    I’ll be damned, the Colonel thought. So they haven’t forgotten about me after all!
    “Lloyd, how the hell are you? You know, I was just sitting here fifteen minutes ago hoping you’d call! Expecting you to call.”
    It was only partly a lie. Certainly he had hoped Washington would call, though he hadn’t actually expected anything. And the name of Lloyd Buckley hadn’t been one of those that had gone through his mind, although the Colonel realized now that it really should have been.
    Buckley, yes. Big meaty red-faced man, loud, cheery, smart, though perhaps not altogether as smart as he thought himself to be. Career State Department man; during the latter years of the Clinton administration an assistant secretary of state for third-world cultural liaison who had done diplomatic shuttle service in Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Turkey, the Seychelles, and other post-Cold War hot spots, working closely with the military side of things. Probably still working in that line these days. A student of military history, he liked to call himself, brandishing the names of Clausewitz, Churchill, Fuller, Creasy. Fancied himself something of an anthropologist, too. Had audited one semester of the course that the Colonel had taught at the Academy, the one in the psychology of non-western cultures. Had had lunch with him a few times, too, seven or eight years back.
    “You’ve been keeping up with the situation, naturally,” Buckley said. “Pretty sensational, isn’t it? You’re not having any problem with those fires, are you?”
    “Not here. They’re a couple of counties away. Some smoke riding on the wind, but I think we’ll be okay around here.”
    “Good. Good. Splendid. —Seen the Entities on the tube yet? The shopping-mall thing, and all?”
    “Of course. The Entities, is that what we’re calling them, then?”
    “The Entities, yes. The aliens. The extraterrestrials. The space invaders. ‘Entities’ seems like the best handle, at least for now. It’s a nice neutral term. ‘E-T’ sounds too Hollywood and ‘Aliens’ makes it sound too much like a problem for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.”
    “And we don’t know that they’re invaders yet, do we?” the Colonel said. “Do we?