Robert Silverberg - The Alien Years

But evidently it caused them some distress, for there were two immediate retaliatory consequences, both of them quite harsh.

The first was that electrical power began going off all over the Earth almost at once. In the initial few days the outages were spotty and irregular, but then a total planetwide interdiction took hold. The power stayed off for the next thirty-nine days, an outage more severe and disruptive than the so-called Great Silence of two years previously. With all electronic communication knocked out, it became impossible, among other things, for the members of the Colorado Freedom Front to carry out the additional laser strikes that had been planned to follow the opening salvo in the so-called War of Liberation.

The second consequence of the laser attack was that sealed canisters stored in eleven of the world’s major cities sprang open within three hours of the Denver event, releasing microorganisms of an apparently synthetic nature that induced an infectious and highly contagious disease of a previously unknown kind across much of the planet. The symptoms were inordinately high fever followed by structural degradation of the larger veins and arteries followed by systemic breakdown and death. There was no known treatment. Quarantines seemed to have little value. Of those infected, about a third, who evidently had some sort of natural immunity, threw off the fever before reaching the stage of circulatory-system breakdown and recovered completely. The rest died within three or four days of onset.

It was Doug Gannett who brought the news to the Colonel, in the early days when limited e-mail communication still was possible. “Everybody’s dying out there,” he said. “I’m getting the same story from whoever’s been able to stay on-line. It’s a huge epidemic and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.”

The Colonel, raging within, reacted outwardly only with a weary nod. “Well, we can try to hide from it,” he said. He called the ranch hands together and told the ones who lived on the premises that they would continue to be free to go down into Santa Barbara, as before, but that they would not be allowed to return if they did. As for the ones who lived in town, mainly in the Mexican neighborhood on the south side, he let them know that they could choose between remaining at the ranch or going back down to their homes and families, but that if they did leave the ranch there would be no coming back.

“The same, of course, goes for all of you,” he told the various assembled Carmichaels, giving each of them a long, slow look. “You go out there, you don’t get back in. No exceptions.”

“And how long does this rule stay in effect?” Ronnie asked.

“As long as it needs to,” said the Colonel.

The worldwide plague continued to rage until early July, bringing what had been left of the world’s economy to a total standstill. Then it vanished as suddenly as it had come, as though the beings who had loosed it upon the world had now concluded that it had done its job to sufficiently good effect.

The effects had been considerable. On the lofty, isolated hillside where Rancho Carmichael was situated, there had been no impact at all, except for the loss of the ranch hands who had opted to return to their families, and who, it was presumed, had perished with them. Down below, things went quite differently. When the damage finally could be reckoned up, it turned out that close to fifty percent of the world’s population had perished. The actual death rate varied, of course, from country to country, depending on local standards of sanitation and the availability of convalescent care; but none went unscathed, and some were virtually wiped out. Across the face of the world a new kind of Great Silence had fallen, the silence of depopulation. And though some three billion human beings had somehow managed to survive, very few of them had any further inclination to attempt or even consider hostile action against the alien conquerors of Earth.

The Colonel, waiting out on the ranch-house porch for the members of the Resistance Committee to assemble for the monthly meeting, believed himself to be awake. But in these latter days he moved all too easily between the world of sunlight and the realm of shadows, and as he sat there slowly rocking, lost in swirling daydreams, he found it difficult to be certain which side of the line he was really on.

It was a bright April day, clear and dry after one of the wettest rainy seasons on record. The air was warm and vibrant, and the hills were thick with a dense, lush growth of tall green grass that soon would be taking on its tawny summertime hue.

A bad business, all that thick grass. Great fuel for the autumn fire season, once it dried out.

The fires—the fires—

The Colonel’s drowsy mind drifted backward across the years to show him Los Angeles burning, the day the Entities came. The scene on the television: the angry, reddened sky, the leaping tongues of flame, the gigantic, terrifying black column of smoke rising toward the stratosphere. Houses exploding like firecrackers, bim bam boom, block after block. And the plucky little firefighting planes soaring above the holocaust, trying to get down close enough to do some good with their cargoes of water and fire-retardant chemicals.

His brother Mike aboard one of those planes—Mike—

Up there over the fire, threading a difficult course through the treacherous upgusts of heat and wind—

Be careful, Mike—please, Mike—

“It’s okay, Grandpa. I’m right here.”

The Colonel blinked his eyes open. Took in the scene. No fires, no smoke, no little planes tossing about. Just the wide cloudless sky, the green hills all around, and a tall fair-haired adolescent boy with the long red scar on his cheek standing beside him. Anse’s son, that one was. The nicer one. The Colonel observed that he was slouching in his chair, and pulled himself irritatedly upright.

“Did I say something, boy?”

“You called my name. ‘Mike,’ you said. ‘Be careful, Mike!’ But I wasn’t doing anything, just waiting for you to wake up. Were you having a dream?”

“I might have been, yes. A daydream, anyway. What time is it?”

“Half past one. My father sent me out to tell you that the Resistance meeting is about ready to get going.”

From the Colonel, a grunt of assent, awareness. But he remained seated where he was.

A moment later Anse himself appeared, coming slowly toward them across the broad flagstone patio. His limp seemed a little worse than usual today, the Colonel thought. He sometimes wondered whether it was all just a theatrical act, that limp of Anse’s, an excuse for him to do a little extra drinking. But the Colonel had not yet forgotten the white shard of hone jutting through Anse’s flesh after the horse had fallen on him three years back, down along the steep trail leading to the well. Nor the hellish sweaty hour when he and Ronnie had struggled to clean the wound and set the fracture, two amateur surgeons working without benefit of anesthesia.

“What’s going on?” Anse asked the boy gruffly. “Didn’t I tell you to bring your grandfather inside for the meeting?”

“Well, Grandpa was asleep, and I didn’t feel good about waking him.”

“Not sleeping,” said the Colonel, “just dozing.”

“Seemed mighty like sleep to me, Grandpa. You were dreaming, and you called out my name.”

“Not his name,” the Colonel explained to Anse. “Mike’s. In fact I was thinking about the day of the fire. Remembering.”

Anse turned to his son and said, “He means his brother. The one you were named for.”

The boy said, “I know. The one who died in battle against the Entities.”