the fire?” the man said.
“Have they got it under control?” the woman asked.
“You didn’t hear about the landing?” I said. “You know, the aliens?”
“Oh, yeah, sure!” The woman laughed out loud.
I was suddenly angry at my inability to communicate what I’d seen—but also for their blind stupidity.
“Get out while you can!” I yelled back at them.
The man was shaking his head at the old fart who’d gone crazy.
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.”
* * * *
My haggard appearance startled my wife. I squatted in my favorite chair, sipped some Pinot Noir that she brought me, and as soon as I could collect myself, told her what I’d seen. She’d just begun putting out dinner, which turned cold on the table while I related my story.
“The one thing in our favor,” I said, “is that they’re the slowest damned things I’ve ever seen. They’re so sluggish that they can barely get around on their own. Sure, they can hold onto that pit forever if they really want to, and kill anyone who comes near it, but I doubt they’re going to be able to move very far from their base. The army’ll stop them as soon as they get here. I sure wish Min had survived, though.”
“He’s in the guest room.”
“What?!”
“He came staggering in an hour after you left. I guess he’d spent the whole night wandering through the hills. I gave him some food, and he just collapsed into bed.”
I heard a noise in the hallway, and there he was, sans undershirt, but still as “raggedy a man as ever man can.”
“Gotta get out of here, man,” he said, belching. “They’ll be coming for us soon. Got any more of that wine, Becky?”
“But where do we go?” I asked, handing him the bottle.
He began chugging it straight down. Nothing refined about Min.
“Damn, that does taste good. North to Sonoma or Santa Rosa or even Willits. Eureka or Coos Bay or Medford or.…” His voice trailed off.
“But you said the Martians weren’t a threat.”
“I said a lot of things, Alex. I’ve always been so full of shit. You know that.”
“You told me that Earth’s gravity is three times that of Mars. And you could see for yourself how they struggled to get up, to breathe, to do anything at all.”
I was in fine academic form indeed.
“Yeah, and I also saw them take us out with that ray-thingie of theirs,” Mindon said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hairy hand. “Look, man, they’ve got machines, just like we do. There are a lot of animals out there who’re stronger than man, or bigger, or faster. We’ve beaten them all. That’s because we’ve got machines. And if the Martian machines are better than our machines—it sure looks that way to me—we’re dead ducks. So let’s get movin’ and groovin’.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” my dear wife said. “I’ve put some things together, Alex. We should leave immediately.”
“Wait a second,” I said, fingering my wineglass. “They just landed. We don’t know anything about them, really. Sure, they might be dangerous, but maybe they’re just as afraid of us as we are of them. Maybe they didn’t expect to find anybody here, certainly no one intelligent.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Mindon said. “They came for a reason. We may not understand that reason yet, but it’s there. Believe me, Alex, it’s there.”
“Yes, but the military’ll be here soon, certainly by tomorrow. They’ll force the aliens to negotiate—or they’ll wipe them out. The buggers’ve only had to face popguns so far. There’s no way they’ll be able to withstand our artillery shells and bombs.”
“You don’t think so?” Mindon shook his head. “You don’t know, my friend. You’re just guessing again. But I’ve seen enough. I’m leaving. My ancestors went through all this shit, and look what it got them: the Last Stand and Wounded Knee and all those other ‘victories’ of Indian manhood. Yeah, we won so damned many battles that there aren’t any of us left anymore. This Indian has had enough excitement for one lifetime. He’s going to keep his scalp intact. I’m leaving, folks. Take my advice, Alex: protect that pretty lady of yours and get the hell out of Dodge while you can.”
But I didn’t, of course. I couldn’t, not while things were still “happening” out there.
The events of the last day had scrambled my brains. All I could think about was that this was it!—the most historic moment in my life. I wanted to be there, to bear witness to the first encounter between man and an alien species.
Well, I encountered them, all right. I wish to God now that I hadn’t. I don’t know where my common sense went, and I sure as hell wouldn’t listen to anyone else.
“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig!”
But I do recall with some pleasure that small Christmas dinner, just the three of us eating cold, simple fare, washed down with plenty of Pinot Noir. I remember that evening with an extraordinary clarity even today. Becky’s beautiful anxious face, her dark hair gracefully framing her cheeks, gazed at me intently, while Mindon discoursed on the tragedy of mankind and the tragedy of the Martians. The white table cloth, the fine cups and silverware and good china, the crimson-purple wine swirling in my glass, all are distinctly etched in my memory. At the end of the meal I sat there sadly regretting Min’s perversity, and denouncing the cowardice of the Martian race.
“Why don’t they come out and fight us like men?”
“Because they’re not men, Alex,” Mindon said. “They’re not men, and we shouldn’t make the mistake of giving them human motivations.
“Look, my friend, I’ve really got to go. I’ve rented an SUV, and I’m going to walk over to the Boulevard now to pick it up. No, I don’t want a lift. You guys”—he shook his head again—“you guys take real good care of yourselves, and maybe we’ll see each other again in some other life.”
If only he’d known.
We were like the dodos, those nice, big, plump, juicy, stupid birds on the island of Mauritius, discussing the arrival of a ship full of pitiless sailors who were looking for fresh meat, and saying to each other, “Why, we’ll just go peck them to death tomorrow, my dears.”
I didn’t know it, but that was the last civilized meal that I would enjoy for many strange and terrible days.
I burped.
I farted.
I belched.
Merry Christmas, New Novato.
CHAPTER EIGHT
STURM UND DRANG
Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress)
—Friedrich von Klinger
Alex Smith, 25 December, Mars Year i
Novato, California, Planet Earth
Owen’s e-mail describing the ship’s arrival was initially judged a hoax, until the other alien vessels starting plopping down all over the California coastline. Even many of those living in Novato dismissed the rumors initially. Nothing could be confirmed on the web, so it just wasn’t real. They continued going about their lives on an ordinary Christmas Day, visiting church to celebrate the Prince of Peace, organizing family get-togethers, eating dinner, watching a few football games on TV. Fires were such a normal risk in California that no one gave them much thought.
After dinner, I scoured the news channels on cable, while Becky checked the Internet.