Read The Alien Years for Free Online

imagine.”
    “I imagine so. That’s exactly what he would be doing.” Anse laughed. “Old Mike would have a fit if it turned out that that really was Cindy out there at the mall with the E-Ts, wouldn’t he, Dad?”
    “I suppose he would. But that wasn’t Cindy out there.
    —Listen, Anse, I do appreciate your calling, okay? Stay in touch. Give my love to Carole.”
    “You know I will, Dad.”
     
    The Colonel clapped the phone shut, and then, as it rang again, opened it almost immediately, thinking, Let it be Mike, let it be Mike.
    But no, it was Paul calling—his nephew, Lee’s boy, the one who taught computer sciences at the Oceanside branch of the University. Worried about the old man and checking in with him, Paul was. The basic California catastrophe procedure, same drill good for earthquakes, fires, race riots, floods, and mudslides: call all your kinfolks within a hundred fifty miles of the event, call all your friends, too, make sure everybody’s all right, tie up the phone lines good and proper, overload the entire Net with needless well-meant communication. He would have expected Paul, at least, to have known better. But of course the Colonel had done the same thing himself only about ten minutes ago, calling all around town trying to track down his brother’s wife.
    “Hell, I’m fine,” the Colonel said. “Air’s getting a little smoky from what’s going on down there, that’s all. I’ve got four Martians sitting in the living room with me right now and I’m teaching them how to play bridge.”
     
    At the airport they had coffee ready, sandwiches, tacos, burritos. While Carmichael was waiting for the ground crew to fill his tanks he went inside to call Cindy again, and again there was no answer at home, none at the studio. He phoned the gallery, which was open by this time, and the shiftless kid who worked there said lazily that she hadn’t been in touch all morning.
    “If you happen to hear from her,” Carmichael said, “tell her I’m flying fire control out of Van Nuys Airport, working the Chatsworth fire, and I’ll be home as soon as things calm down a little. Tell her I miss her, too. And tell her that if I run into an E-T I’ll give it a big hug for her. You got that? Tell her just that.”
    “Will do. Oh, by the way, Mr. Carmichael—”
    “Yes?”
    “Your brother called, twice. Colonel Carmichael, that is. He said he thought you were, like, still in New Mexico and he was trying to find Mrs. Carmichael. I told him you were supposed to be coming back today, and that I didn’t know where she was, but that the fire was, like, nowhere near your house.”
    “Good. If he calls again, let him know what I’m doing.”
    That was odd, Carmichael thought, Anson trying to phone Cindy. The Colonel had done a pretty good job over the past five or six years of pretending that Cindy didn’t exist. Carmichael hadn’t even known that his brother had the gallery number, nor could he understand why he would want to call there. Unless the Colonel was worried about him for some reason, so worried that he didn’t mind having to put up with talking with Cindy.
    Probably I should phone him right now, Carmichael thought, before I go back upstairs.
    But there was no dial tone now. System overload, most likely. Everybody was calling everybody all around the area. It was a miracle that he’d been able to do as well as he had with the phone just now. He hung up, tried again, still got nothing. And there were other people lined up waiting for the phone.
    “Go ahead,” he said to the first man in line, stepping back from the booth. “You try. The line’s dead.”
    He went looking for a different phone. Across the way in the main hall he saw a crowd gathered around someone carrying a portable television set, one of those jobs with a postcard-sized screen. Carmichael shouldered his way in just as the announcer was saying, “There has been no sign yet of the occupants of the San Gabriel or Orange