"This is you. Let it in. This is it! This is how you used your potential. This is what you did with it.
"Get it!" Foreman was shouting. "You are not going to be crowned king, after all! You are not going to be president. You are not going to be a movie star. You are not going to marry Prince Charming. And who the fuck cares anyway? This is it!"
It was horrifying.
And then, Foreman's tone shifted. He was no longer shouting. Somehow, he had become compassionate.
"You carry your grief around with you everywhere you go. You drag your dead bodies with you all through your life. So what? What do you get for it? Nothing. So why do you do it? Look at the cost to you. Look at how it pushes you into anger and revenge. Look at how it keeps you from getting close to the people you really care about. Look at how it keeps you from being complete with them."
Foreman's voice became a comforting presence.
"The only thing you can do that way is survive. And you can't even do that all that well, because all that energy you have tied up in grief and anger and revenge is energy you don't have for anything else. You certainly can't win a war that way. Listen to me. There's something on the other side of survival. There's something so much bigger than survival that mere survival becomes irrelevant in the face of it-and no, I can't tell you what it is. You have to find it for yourself. And you will. I promise you.
"Keep or. letting go of the grief. It's like an anchor holding you down. Let it out. Give it up. Give it away. You don't need to carry it around any more."
And then, after a while, the last of the grief had been shed and we sat down on the floor or leaned up against the walls, We were exhausted. Some people hugged. Some continued to weep quietly, but there were smiles on their faces now and the tears were tears of comfort and joy.
And then, after that, it was time for dinner. After dinner--
52
Afterburn
"Nobody is ever really ready for anything. If they were, there would be no point in living through it."
-SOLOMON SHORT
I was tired.
Tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of living.
I was looking at a concrete bridge abutment as it raced toward me. I was thinking how easy it would be to just end the pain once and for all. A quick twist and it would be over.
Or would it?
With my luck, I would live.
I'd probably just knock a bridge down on my head; army vans were supposed to be as strong as tanks. But then again, maybe not . . .
And while I was frowning over the crashability of the van, the bridge abutment raced past-
-and I realized how close I had come to actually jerking the wheel sideways.
I pulled off the road.
No, not here. The highway was too open. Too unprotected. I wanted a place to stop where I could feel safe.
I couldn't stop here-and I couldn't keep going. Who was it who had once said hell was an endless highway? Everybody, probably. It was too easy.
Twenty minutes later, the highway narrowed to four lanes and curved up into the foothills.
There.
A shaded rest area on a rise. I could turn on the detectors. Nothing could approach without setting off the alarms.
I pulled the van onto the dirt and pried open the door. I almost fell out onto the ground. My hands were shaking with exhaustion. I lay there with my face in the grass, just smelling the greenness of it. And the pinkness. That smelled good too. Like cotton candy.
And then I focused and I saw the little pink sprouts coming up here and there. And the blue as well. That's what I was smelling. I sat up and looked around. Next year, there wouldn't be any green on this hill at all.
I got up. I walked around the van. I walked away from it. I started to feel nervous. I walked back to it. Maybe I should get my rifle. No, maybe I shouldn't. If something was going to eat me, let it eat me.
I didn't know if I wanted to live or die.
"Do you know how a Chtorran likes to be burped?" I said.
"No," I answered. "How does a Chtorran like to be burped?"
"From the inside," I said.
It wasn't funny.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. I took them out. I felt restless. I wanted something to eat and I felt nauseous. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. Was this me or was it the effect of all the pink and blue and red and orange I was seeing around here. Did all those Chtorran plants put something into the atmosphere that made people crazy?
That was as good an explanation as any. I walked away from the van, just for something to do.
"Did you ever notice," I said, "that people always have to have a good reason for being crazy. There's always a justification. Something is doing it to you. If it isn't your parents, it's the army, w the government. Or the Communists. Now we have the Chtorrans to blame it on. The Chtorran ecology is making me crazy. Shit! Doesn't anybody ever go crazy because they want to? Just for the fun of it?
"I mean, being crazy is a great way to get attention without having to be responsible. They come and get you and put you in nice padded room arid take care of you forever after. Being crazy is a great way to escape. I think I'll be crazy."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I was already crazy. I'd been crazy for years.
"We're born crazy," someone had told me once.
"We spend all of our lives trying to get sane. That's what keeps us crazy. If we'd just relax and be crazy, we'd be all right."
"Huh?" I said.
The voice went on. "Trying to prove that you're sane is crazy. If you're crazy, be crazy. That's sane."
It didn't make sense. "Shut up," I said to the voice. "This neurotic pursuit of sanity is driving me bananas."
"You got it."
"I got nothing."
"Right. You got it. There's nothing to get."
"Shut the fuck up!" I shouted at the sky. "Leave me alone!" I remembered something I had seen once, a long time ago. We had been visiting my grandmother in Los Angeles. We had been driving west on the Ventura freeway one evening at dusk, when suddenly this bright, bright light appeared in the sky. It looked like a star, only it was too brilliant for that. As we watched, it started to spread streamers of glow through the hazy atmosphere. Wider and wider. Traffic around us slowed. "What is it?" my mother had asked. My dad hadn't said anything.
I said, "It's too steady to be a missile. Missiles move."
"Are we at war?" asked Maggie.
Dad said, "If it were incoming, we wouldn't see it like that. If it's a launch . . . but it doesn't look like any launch I've ever seen."
I said, "Maybe it's a nova."
"Too bright," said Dad.
"A supernova then-?"
He didn't answer, and I knew for a moment I'd guessed right. I was absolutely certain. Oh, my God. We'd been reading about supernovas in school. They exploded and put out great scouring waves of radiation. For us to see one this big and this bright meant that it was close enough to destroy the Earth. I was certain of it. I was looking at the end of the world.
We were probably already being bombarded by lethal radiation. We were already dead. I remember feeling cold and alone and totally helpless as I stared at that light in the sky. I wanted to cry.
And then the light puffed up, exploded and disappeared, leaving only a few glittering twinkles like fireworks.
I was glad I hadn't said anything. I would have looked like an idiot.
Dad said, "It has to be a missile launch. Vandenberg is just up the coast. But it sure was a weird looking one, wasn't it?" He switched on the radio, and a few minutes later the announcer confirmed that a test missile had been fired and destroyed when it went off course.