Robert Silverberg - The Alien Years

Anson glanced toward him in that taut way of his, as though expecting some reaction. Khalid said nothing.

“It’s become evident, or so we think,” Anson went on, “that these three cities are the main command centers of the Entities, their capitals on Earth, and that Los Angeles is probably the capital of capitals for them. You may be aware that the wall around Los Angeles is higher and thicker than the wall around any other city. There may be some significance in that.—Well, Khalid, we jump now to our big hypothesis. Not only is Los Angeles very likely the main city, but it may contain a supreme figure, the commander-in-chief of all the Entities. What we have begun to call Entity Prime.”

Another wary glance at Khalid. Again Khalid offered no reaction. What was there for him to say?

Anson went on, “We think—we guess, we suspect, we believe—that all the Entities might be linked in some telepathic way to Entity Prime, and that they make regular pilgrimages to the site where Prime is located for some reason that we don’t understand, but which may have to do with their own biological processes, or their mental processes. A communion of some sort, maybe. As though they renew themselves somehow by going to see Prime. And that is Los Angeles, although there’s certain secondary evidence that it could be London or Istanbul instead.”

“You know this?” said Khalid doubtfully.

“Just a hypothesis,” said Leslyn. “But maybe a pretty good one.”

Khalid nodded. He wondered why they were bothering him with these matters.

“Like the queen bee who rules the hive,” said Alike.

“Ah,” said Khalid. “The queen bee.”

Anson said, “Not necessarily female, of course. Not necessarily anything. But suppose, now, that we were able to locate Prime—track him down, find him wherever they’ve got him hidden away in Los Angeles, or maybe in London or Istanbul. If we did that, and could get an assassin in to kill him, what effect would that have on the rest of the Entities, do you think?”

At last Khalid could provide something worthwhile. “When I killed the one in Salisbury,” he said, “the one next to him in the wagon went into convulsions. I thought for a moment I might have shot that one too, though I didn’t. So their minds may be linked just as you say.”

“You see? You see?” cried Anson triumphantly. “We start to get confirmation! Why the hell didn’t you tell us this stuff, Khalid? You shoot one and the other one on the wagon has convulsions! I’ll bet they all did, all around the world, right on up to Prime!”

“We need to check on this,” Steve said. “Find out, from as many sources we can, whether anyone observed unusual behavior among the Entities at the time of the Salisbury killing.”

Anson nodded. “Right. And if there was some kind of general worldwide Entity freakout as a result of the death of one relatively unimportant member of their species—then if we could somehow manage to find and kill Prime—well, Khalid, do you see where we’re heading?”

Khalid looked down at the maze of papers spread out all over the leather-topped desk.

“Of course. That you want to kill Prime.”

“More specifically, that we want you to kill Prime!”

“Me?” He laughed. “Oh, no, Anson.”

“No?”

“No. That is not a thing I would want to do. Oh, no, Anson. No.”

That seemed to stun them. It knocked the wind right out of them. Anson’s pale face turned bright red with anger, and Mike said something under his breath to Leslyn, and Steve muttered something to Leslyn also.

Then Leslyn, who was sitting just at Khalid’s elbow, looked up at him and said, “Why wouldn’t you? You’re the one person qualified to do it.”

“But I have no reason to do it. Killing Prime, if there is such a thing as Prime, is nothing to me.”

“Are you afraid?” Mike asked.

“Not at all. I would probably die in the attempt, and I would not want that to happen, because I have small children whom I love, and I want them to have a father. But I am not afraid, no. What I am is indifferent.”

“To what?”

“To the project of killing Entities. It is true that I killed that Entity when I was a boy, but I did it for special reasons that were of importance only to myself. Those reasons have been satisfied. Killing Entities is your project, not mine.”

“Don’t you want to see them driven from the world?” Steve Gannett asked him.

“They can keep the world forever, so far as I am concerned,” replied Khalid evenly. “Who rules the world is not my concern. From what I understand, there was never much happiness in it even before the Entities came, at least not for my family. Those people are all dead, now, the family I had in England. I never knew them anyway, except for one. But now I have children of my own. I find happiness in them. For the first time in my life, I have tasted happiness. The thing that I want is to stay here and raise my children. Not to go into a city I do not know and try to kill some strange being that means nothing to me. Perhaps I would return alive from that, more likely not. But why should I take the risk? What is there for me to gain?”

“Khalid—” Anson said.

“Was I not sufficiently clear? I tried to express myself very clearly indeed.”

Stymied. Khalid seemed as alien to them as the Entities themselves.

They sent him from the room. He went back to his cabin, opened his tool chest, asked Jill to resume her pose. Of what had taken place in the chart room he said nothing at all. His children fluttered around him, Khalifa, Rasheed, Yasmeena, Aissha, Haleem, naked, lovely. Khalid’s heart swelled with joy at the sight of them. Allah was good; Allah had brought him to this mountain, had given him the strange and beautiful Jill, had caused these children of his to be born to her. After much suffering his life had begun at last to blossom. Why should he surrender it for these people’s foolish project?

“Get me Tony,” Anson said, when Khalid was gone.

His conversation with his brother was brief. Tony had never been a deep thinker, nor was he a man of many words. He was eight years younger than Anson and had always held him in the deepest reverence. Loved him; feared him; looked up to him. Would do anything for him. Even this, Anson hoped.

He explained to Tony what was at stake, and what would be needed to bring it off.

“I’m going to give it a try,” Anson said. “It’s my responsibility.”

“Is that how you see it? Well, then.”

“That’s how I see it, yes. But the first one who goes down there may not bring it off. If I don’t succeed in killing Prime, will you agree to be the next one to take a whack at the job?”

“Sure,” Tony replied immediately. He seemed hardly even to give the matter any consideration. The difficulties, the risk. No frowns furrowed Tony’s broad, amiable, clear-eyed face. “Why not? Whatever you say, Anson. You’re the boss.”

“It won’t be that simple. It could involve months of special training. Years, maybe.”

“You’re the boss,” Tony said.

A little while later, as Khalid was finishing his morning’s work, Anson came to him. He looked even more tightly wound than usual, lips clamped tightly, eyebrows furrowed. They stood together outside the building, amidst the carved array of naked wooden Jills, and Anson said, “You told us just now that you were indifferent to the whole idea of killing Entities. That you were indifferent to it, apparently, even as you went about killing one.”

“Yes. This is so.”

“Do you think you could instruct somebody in that kind of indifference, Khalid? That way you have of wiping your mind clean of anything that might arouse an Entity’s defenses?”