“Probably not. But the little ones—they have to be a superior species. We know that because they’re the ones who came to us. We didn’t go to them.”
She laughed. “It all sounds so absurd. That Central Park should be full of creatures—”
“But what if they do want to conquer Earth?” I asked.
“Oh,” Maranta said. “I don’t think that would necessarily be so awful.”
The smaller aliens spent the first few days installing a good deal of mysterious equipment on the mall in the vicinity of their ship: odd intricate shimmering constructions that looked as though they belonged in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art. They made no attempt to enter into communication with us. They showed no interest in us at all. The only time they took notice of us was when we sent spy-eyes overhead. They would tolerate them for an hour or two and then would shoot them down, casually, like swatting flies, with spurts of pink light. The networks—and then the government surveillance agencies, when they moved in—put the eyes higher and higher each day, but the aliens never failed to find them. After a week or so we were forced to rely for our information on government spy satellites monitoring the park from space, and on whatever observers equipped with binoculars could glimpse from the taller apartment houses and hotels bordering the park. Neither of these arrangements was entirely satisfactory.
The behemoths, during those days, were content to roam aimlessly through the park southward from 72nd Street, knocking over trees, squatting down to eat them. Each one gobbled two or three trees a day, leaves, branches, trunk, and all. There weren’t all that many trees to begin with down there, so it seemed likely that before long they’d have to start ranging farther afield.
The usual civic groups spoke up about the trees. They wanted the mayor to do something to protect the park. The monsters, they said, would have to be made to go elsewhere—to Canada, perhaps, where there were plenty of expendable trees. The mayor said that he was studying the problem but that it was too early to know what the best plan of action would be.
His chief goal, in the beginning, was simply to keep a lid on the situation. We still didn’t even know, after all, whether we were being invaded or just visited. To play it safe the police were ordered to set up and maintain round-the-clock sealfields completely encircling the park in the impacted zone south of 72nd Street. The power costs of this were staggering and Con Edison found it necessary to impose a 10% voltage cutback in the rest of the city, which caused a lot of grumbling, especially now that it was getting to be air-conditioner weather.
The police didn’t like any of this: out there day and night standing guard in front of an intangible electronic barrier with ungodly monsters just a sneeze away. Now and then one of the blue goliaths would wander near the sealfield and peer over the edge. A sealfield maybe a dozen feet high doesn’t give you much of a sense of security when there’s an animal two or three times that height looming over its top.
So the cops asked for time and a half. Combat pay, essentially. There wasn’t room in the city budget for that, especially since no one knew how long the aliens were going to continue to occupy the park. There was talk of a strike. The mayor appealed to Washington, which had studiously been staying remote from the whole event as if the arrival of an extraterrestrial task force in the middle of Manhattan was purely a municipal problem.
The president rummaged around in the Constitution and decided to activate the National Guard. That surprised a lot of basically sedentary men who enjoy dressing up occasionally in uniforms. The Guard hadn’t been called out since the Bulgarian business in ’94 and its current members weren’t very sharp on procedures, so some hasty on-the-job training became necessary. As it happened, Maranta’s husband Tim was an officer in the 107th Infantry, which was the regiment that was handed the chief responsibility for protecting New York City against the creatures from space. So his life suddenly was changed a great deal, and so was Maranta’s; and so was mine.
Like everybody else, I found myself going over to the park again and again to try and get a glimpse of the aliens. But the barricades kept you fifty feet away from the park perimeter on all sides, and the taller buildings flanking the park had put themselves on a residents-only admission basis, with armed guards enforcing it, so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by hordes of curiosity-seekers.
I did see Tim, though. He was in charge of an improvised-looking command post at Fifth and 59th, near the horse-and-buggy stand. Youngish stockbrokery-looking men kept running up to him with reports to sign, and he signed each one with terrific dash and vigor, without reading any of them. In his crisp tan uniform and shiny boots, he must have seen himself as some doomed and gallant officer in an ancient movie, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, bracing himself for the climactic cavalry charge or the onslaught of the maddened Sepoys. The poor bastard.
“Hey, old man,” he said, grinning at me in a doomed and gallant way. “Came to see the circus, did you?”
We weren’t really best friends any more. I don’t know what we were to each other. We rarely lunched any more. (How could we? I was busy three days a week with Maranta.) We didn’t meet at the gym. It wasn’t to Tim I turned to advice on personal problems or second opinions on investments. There was some sort of bond but I think it was mostly nostalgia. But officially I guess I did still think of him as my best friend, in a kind of automatic unquestioning way.
I said, “Are you free to go over to the Plaza for a drink?”
“I wish. I don’t get relieved until 2100 hours.”
“Nine o’clock, is that it?”
“Nine, yes. You fucking civilian.”
It was only half past one. The poor bastard.
“What’ll happen to you if you leave your post?”
“I could get shot for desertion,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Especially if the monsters pick that moment to bust out of the park. This is war, old buddy.”
“Is it, do you think? Maranta doesn’t think so.” I wondered if I should be talking about what Maranta thought. “She says they’re just out exploring the galaxy.”
Tim shrugged. “She always likes to see the sunny side. That’s an alien military force over there inside the park. One of these days they’re going to blow a bugle and come out with blazing rayguns. You’d better believe it.”
“Through the sealfield?”
“They could walk right over it,” Tim said. “Or float, for all I know. There’s going to be a war. The first intergalactic war in human history.” Again the dazzling Cary Grant grin. Her Majesty’s Bengal lancers, ready for action. “Something to tell my grandchildren,” said Tim. “Do you know what the game plan is? First we attempt to make contact. That’s going on right now, but they don’t seem to be paying attention to us. If we ever establish communication, we invite them to sign a peace treaty. Then we offer them some chunk of Nevada or Kansas as a diplomatic enclave and get them the hell out of New York. But I don’t think any of that’s going to happen. I think they’re busy scoping things out in there, and as soon as they finish that they’re going to launch some kind of attack, using weapons we don’t even begin to understand.”
“And if they do?”
“We nuke them,” Tim said. “Tactical devices, just the right size for Central Park Mall.”
“No,” I said, staring. “That isn’t so. You’re kidding me.”
He looked pleased, a gotcha look. “Matter of fact, I am. The truth is that nobody has the goddamndest idea of what to do about any of this. But don’t think the nuke strategy hasn’t been suggested. And some even crazier things.”