“You go on along, Mike. We’ll look after the fire without you for a while, okay?”
The Air Force car looked like a general’s limo, long and low and sleek, with a square-jawed driver in front and a couple of very tough-looking young officers to sit with him in back. They said hardly anything, and they looked as weary as Carmichael felt. “How’s my wife?” he asked, and one of them said, “We understand that she hasn’t been harmed.” The way he said it was stiff and strange. Carmichael shrugged. The kid has seen too many old Air Force movies, he told himself.
The whole city seemed to be on fire now. Within the airconditioned limo there was only the faintest whiff of smoke, but the sky to the east was terrifying, with streaks of red bursting like meteors through the blackness. Carmichael asked the Air Force men about that, but all he got was a clipped, “It looks pretty bad, we understand.” Somewhere along the San Diego Freeway between Mission Hills and Sylmar, Carmichael fell asleep, and the next thing he knew they were waking him gently and leading him into a vast bleak hangar-like building near the reservoir. The place was a maze of cables and screens, with military personnel operating what looked like a thousand computers and ten thousand telephones. He let himself be shuffled along, moving mechanically and barely able to focus his eyes, to an inner office where a gray-haired colonel greeted him in his best this-is-the-tense-part-of-the-movie style and said, “This may be the most difficult job you’ve ever had to handle, Mr. Carmichael.”
Carmichael scowled. Everybody was Hollywood in this damned town, he thought.
“They told me the hostages were being freed,” he said. “Where’s my wife?”
The colonel pointed to a television screen. “We’re going to let you talk to her right now.”
“Are you saying I don’t get to see her?”
“Not immediately.”
“Why not? Is she all right?”
“As far as we know, yes.”
“You mean she hasn’t been released? They told me the hostages were being freed.”
“All but three have been let go,” said the colonel. “Two people, according to the aliens, were injured as they were captured, and are undergoing medical treatment aboard the ship. They’ll be released shortly. The third is your wife, Mr. Carmichael. She is unwilling to leave the ship.”
It was like hitting an air-pocket. “Unwilling—?”
“She claims to have volunteered to make the journey to the home world of the aliens. She says she’s going to serve as our ambassador, our special emissary. Mr. Carmichael, does your wife has any history of mental imbalance?”
Glaring, Carmichael said, “She’s very sane. Believe me.”
“You are aware that she showed no display of fear when the aliens seized her in the shopping-center incident this morning?”
“I know, yes. That doesn’t mean she’s crazy. She’s unusual. She has unusual ideas. But she’s not crazy. Neither am I, incidentally.” He put his hands to his face for a moment and pressed his fingertips lightly against his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Let me talk to her.”
“Do you think you can persuade her to leave that ship?”
“I’m sure as hell going to try.”
“You are not yourself sympathetic to what she’s doing, are you?” the colonel asked.
Carmichael looked up. “Yes, I am sympathetic. She’s an intelligent woman doing something that she thinks is important, and doing it of her own free will. Why the hell shouldn’t I be sympathetic? But I’m going to try to talk her out of it, you bet. I love her. I want her. Somebody else can be the goddamned ambassador to Betelgeuse. Let me talk to her, will you?”
The colonel gestured and the big television screen came to life. For a moment mysterious colored patterns flashed across it in a disturbing random way; then Carmichael caught glimpses of shadowy catwalks, intricate metal strutworks crossing and recrossing at peculiar angles; and then for an instant one of the aliens appeared on the screen. Yellow platter-eyes looked complacently back at him. Carmichael felt altogether wide awake now.
The alien’s face vanished and Cindy came into view. The moment he saw her, Carmichael knew that he had lost her.
Her face was glowing. There was a calm joy in her eyes verging on ecstasy. He had seen her look something like that on many occasions, but this was different: this was beyond anything she had attained before. She had seen the beatific vision, this time.
“Cindy?”
“Hello, Mike.”
“Can you tell me what’s been happening in there, Cindy?”
“It’s incredible. The contact, the communication.”
Sure, he thought. If anyone could make contact with the space people it would be Cindy. She had a certain kind of magic about her: the gift of being able to open any door.
She said, “They speak mind to mind, you know, no barriers at all. They’ve come in peace, to get to know us, to join in harmony with us, to welcome us into the confederation of worlds.”
He moistened his lips. “What have they done to you, Cindy? Have they brainwashed you or something?”
“No! No, nothing like that! They haven’t done a thing to me, Mike! We’ve just talked.”
“Talked!”
“They’ve showed me how to touch my mind to theirs. That isn’t brainwashing. I’m still me. I, me, Cindy. I’m okay. Do I look as though I’m being harmed? They aren’t dangerous. Believe me.”
“They’ve set fire to half the city with their exhaust trails, you know.”
“That grieves them. It was an accident. They didn’t understand how dry the hills were. If they had some way of extinguishing the flames, they would, but the fires are too big even for them. They ask us to forgive them. They want everyone to know how sorry they are.” She paused a moment. Then she said, very gently, “Mike, will you come on board? I want you to experience them as I’m experiencing them.”
“I can’t do that, Cindy.”
“Of course you can! Anyone can! You just open your mind, and they touch you, and—”
“I know. I don’t want to. Come out of there and come home, Cindy. Please. Please. It’s been three days—four, now—I want to hug you, I want to hold you—”
“You can hold me as tight as you like. They’ll let you on board. We can go to their world together. You know that I’m going to go with them to their world, don’t you?”
“You aren’t. Not really.”
She nodded gravely. She seemed terribly serious. “They’ll be leaving in a few weeks, as soon as they’ve had a chance to exchange gifts with Earth. I’ve seen images of their planet—like movies, only they do it with their minds—Mike, you can’t imagine how beautiful it is! How eager they are to have me come!”
Sweat rolled out of his hair into his eyes, making him blink, but he did not dare wipe it away, for fear she would think he was crying.
“I don’t want to go to their planet, Cindy. And I don’t want you to go either.”
She was silent for a time.
Then she smiled delicately and said, “I know, Mike.”
He clenched his fists and let go and clenched them again. “I can’t go there.”
“No. You can’t. I understand that. Los Angeles is alien enough for you, I think. You need to be in your Valley, in your own real world, not running off to some far star. I won’t try to coax you.”
“But you’re going to go anyway?” he asked, and it was not really a question.
“You already know what I’m going to do.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. But not really.”
“Do you love me?” he said, and regretted saying it at once.
She smiled sadly. “You know I do. And you know I don’t want to leave you. But once they touched my mind with theirs, once I saw what kind of beings they are—do you know what I mean? I don’t have to explain, do I? You always know what I mean.”