The Alien Years (65 page)

Andy was looking at him strangely. “And was that what they were for you, too, Frank? Gods?”

“For me? No. Devils, is what they were, for me. Devils. I hated them.” He walked away from Andy and began to move forward through the lines of numbed, dazed-looking people standing in front of the LACON building. No one paid any attention to him.

He passed among them, peering into their faces, their empty eyes. They were like sleepwalkers. It was frightening to look at them. But he understood their fear. He felt some of it himself. That confusion, that despair, that had come over him when he first heard that the Entities were leaving: it stemmed from the same uncertainty as theirs. What, Frank wondered, was going to happen in the world now that the Entity episode was over?

Episode.
That was what it had been, he knew. The invasion, the conquest, the years of alien rule—just a single episode, if a very strange one, in humanity’s long history. Fifty-some years, out of thousands. The
alien
years, is what they would be called. And, thinking about it that way, giving it that name,
episode,
Frank felt himself at last beginning to come out of the fog of bewilderment that had engulfed him these few hours past since Andy first had told him of the Entities’ withdrawal.

The alien years had changed things very greatly, yes. Such episodes always did. But this wasn’t the first time that some great calamity had transformed the world. It had happened again and again. The Assyrians would come, or the Mongol hordes, or the Nazis, or the Black Death, or alien beings from the stars—whatever—and afterward nothing would be the same again.

But still, Frank thought, come what may, the basic things always continued: breakfast, lunch, love, sex, sunshine, rain, fear, hope, ambition, dreams, gratification, disappointment, victory, defeat, youth, age, birth, death. The Entities had arrived and they had wiped the world clean of everything fixed and stable, God only knew why; and then they went away, he thought, God knows why; and we are still here, and now we must start over, just as inevitably as spring starts everything over once winter is done with us.
Now we must start over.
God knows why, yes, and we don’t. He would have to talk to Khalid about that when he returned to the ranch.

“Frank?”

Andy had come up behind him. Frank glanced at him over his shoulder, but said nothing.

“Are you all right, Frank?”

“Of course I’m all right.”

“Walking away from me like that. Wandering around among these people. Something’s bothering you in a big way. You miss the Entities as much as they do, is that it?”

“I said I hated them. I said they were devils. But yes, yes, I do miss them, in a way. Because now I know that I won’t ever get a chance to kill any of them.” Turning, Frank faced Andy squarely. “You know,” he said, “when you told me they were gone, it made me furious. After my father died, I had wanted so bad to be the one who drove them away. Even though I knew we probably weren’t capable of doing it. But now, coming right out of the blue, I lose even the possibility of my doing it.”

“Like father, like son, eh?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Frank asked.

“Right. Anson was so goddamned eager to go down in history as the man who got us out from under the Entities. And it broke him in half, wanting that. Broke him right in half. Is that what you want to happen to you?”

“I’m not as brittle as my father was,” said Frank. “—You know, Andy, the only people who ever actually killed any Entities were Khalid and Rasheed, and they hadn’t given a damn about it at all. Which was why they were able to succeed at it. And I
did
give a damn, but I’m not ever going to get a chance to do anything about it, and for a while today it really set me back, realizing that. So I guess it’s pretty much the same for me as for them,” he said, waving an arm at the ghostly, shuffling people all around them. “They’re upset because they’ve lost their beloved Entities. I’m upset because I don’t have the Entities to hate any more.”

“You want to do something to work the hate out of your system, then? Go into that building and drag that LACON quisling out of it, and get these people here to string him up to a lamppost. He collaborated with the enemy. Collaborators will have to be punished, won’t they?”

“I don’t think killing quislings is the answer, Andy.”

“What is, then?”

“Tearing down the walls, for a starter. How big a job will it be, do you think, tearing down the walls?”

Andy was staring at him as if he had lost his mind. “Plenty big. Plenty.”

“Well, we’ll do it anyway. We built them, we can tear them down.” Frank took a deep breath. That other wall, the one within him, that wall of numb despair and bafflement, was beginning to break up and fall away. It was all going from him, his uncertainty, his confusion in the face of the Entities’ departure.

He looked up into the bright, clear sky:
through
the sky, to the hidden stars, to the unknown star that was the home of the Entities. He would have incinerated that star with his gaze, if he could, so hungry was he for revenge against them.

But what revenge was possible against gods who had come here and changed the world beyond recognition, and then had fled like thieves in the night?

Why, to restore the world to what it had been; and then to make it even finer than that. That was what he would do. That would be his revenge.

He thought he understood, now, what had happened to the world. By sending us the Entities, the universe has sent us a message. The problem is that we don’t know what it is. The job that faces us in the next hundred years, or five hundred, or however long it takes, is to find the meaning in the message that came to us from the stars.

And meanwhile—

Meanwhile, through some miracle, we are free again. And now, he thought, someone has to step forward and say,
This is what freedom is like, this is how free people behave.
And a new world would come forth out of the rubble of the one that the Entities had abandoned.

“We’ll take the walls down everywhere,” Frank said. “I want to travel around and watch it happening. New York, Chicago, Washington, all those places they have back east that I’ve heard of. Even London. Paris. Rome. Why not? We’ll do it.”

Andy was still staring at him.

“You think I’m crazy?” Frank asked. “Look, we can’t just sit around on our asses. There’s going to be chaos now. Anarchy. I’ve read about what happens when a central power suddenly evaporates, and it isn’t good. We have to do something, Andy.
Something.
I don’t know what, but tearing down the walls is a good place to start. Tear down first, then rebuild. Is that so crazy, Andy? Is it?”

He didn’t stay for an answer. He began once more to walk away, moving quickly this time.

“Hey!” Andy called. “Hey, where are you going?”

“Back to the car. I want to take a close look at the wall and see how it’s put together. So I can figure out the best way of blasting it apart.”

Andy stayed where he was, looking toward Frank’s rapidly retreating back.

It crossed his mind that he had badly underestimated Frank all along. Thinking of him as a mere lightweight, just another of that swarm of interchangeable blond kids all over the ranch. No, Andy thought. Wrong. Frank is different. Frank will be the one to build something—who the hell could say what it would be?—out of this nothingness that the Entities have left us. Not even Frank knew, just now, what Frank was going to do. But Frank would give the world a second chance. Or kill us all, trying.

He grinned. Slowly shook his head.

“Carmichaels
,” he muttered.

Frank was at the car now. Andy realized that if he waited any longer, Frank was going to get in and drive away without him.

“Hey! Hey, Frank, wait for me!” he yelled. And began to run toward the car.