Carmichael had never asked her whether HESTEGHON was her own invention, or something that she had heard about from a West Hollywood guru or read about in one of the cheaply printed books of spiritual teachings that she liked to buy. He preferred not to get into any kind of discussion with her about it.
And yet he had never thought she was insane. Los Angeles was full of nutcases who wanted to ride in flying saucers, or claimed they already had, but it didn’t sound nutty to Carmichael when Cindy talked that way. She had the innate Angeleno love of the exotic and the bizarre, yes, but he felt certain that her soul had never been touched by the crazy corruption here, that she was untainted by the prevailing craving for the weird and irrational that made him loathe the place so much. If she turned her imagination toward the stars, it was out of wonder, not out of madness: it was simply part of her nature, that curiosity, that hunger for what lay outside her experience, to embrace the unknowable.
Carmichael had had no more belief in E-Ts than he did in the tooth fairy, but for her sake he had told her that he hoped she’d get her wish. And now the UFO people were really here. He could imagine her, eyes shining, standing at the edge of that cordon staring lovingly at the spaceship.
He almost hoped she was. It was a pity he couldn’t be with her now, feeling all that excitement surging through her, the joy, the wonder, the magic.
But he had work to do. Swinging the DC-3 back around toward the west, he swooped down as close as he dared to the edge of the fire and hit the release button on his dump lines. Behind him, a great crimson cloud spread out: a slurry of ammonium sulphate and water, thick as paint, with a red dye mixed into it so they could tell which areas had been sprayed. The retardant clung in globs to anything, and would keep it damp for hours.
Emptying his four 500-gallon tanks quickly, he headed back to Van Nuys to reload. His eyes were throbbing with fatigue and the bitter stink of the wet charred earth below was filtering through every plate of the old plane. It was not quite noon. He had been up all night.
The Colonel stood holding the phone while it rang and rang and rang, but there was no answer at his brother’s house, and no way to leave a message, either. A backup number came up on the phone’s little screen: Cindy’s jewelry studio. What the hell, the Colonel thought. He was committed to this thing now; he could keep on going. He hit the key for the studio. But no one answered there either.
A second backup number appeared. This one was the gallery in Santa Monica where she had her retail shop. Unhesitatingly, now, the Colonel hit that one. A clerk answered, a boy who by the sound of his high scratchy voice was probably about sixteen, and the Colonel asked for Mrs. Carmichael. Hasn’t been in yet today, the clerk said. Should have been in by now, but somehow she wasn’t. The kid didn’t sound very concerned. He made it seem as if he was doing the Colonel a favor by answering the telephone at all. Nobody under twenty-five had any respect for telephones. They were all getting biochips implanted, the Colonel had heard. That was the hottest thing now, passing data around with your forearm pressed against an X-plate. Or so his nephew Paul had said. Paul was twenty-seven, or so: young enough to know about these things. Telephones, Paul had said, were for dinosaurs.
“I’m Mrs. Carmichael’s brother-in-law,” the Colonel said. It was a phrase he could not remember having used before. “Ask her to call me when she comes in, will you, please?” he told the boy, and hung up.
Then he realized that a more detailed message might have been useful. He hit the redial key and when the boy came back on the line he said, “It’s Colonel Carmichael again, Mrs. Carmichael’s brother-in-law. I should have told you that I’m actually trying to find my brother, who’s been out of town all week. I thought perhaps Mrs. Carmichael might know when he’s due back.”
“She said last night that he was supposed to be coming back today,” the boy said. “But like I told you, I haven’t spoken to her yet today. Is there some problem?”
“I don’t know if there is or not. I’m up in Santa Barbara, and I was wondering whether—the fire, you know—their house—”
“Oh. Right. The fire. It’s, like, out by Simi Valley somewhere, right?” The kid spoke as though that were in some other country. “The Carmichaels live, like, in L.A., you know, the hills just above Sunset. I wouldn’t worry about them if I were you. But I’ll have her phone you if she checks in with me. Does she have your implant access code?”
“I just use the regular data web.” I’m a dinosaur, the Colonel thought. I come from a long line of them. “She knows the number. Tell her to call right away. Please.”
As soon as he clipped the cell phone back in his waistband it made the little bleeping sound of an incoming call. He yanked it out again and flipped it open.
“Yes?” he said, a little too eagerly.
“It’s Anse, Dad.” His older son’s deep baritone. The Colonel had three children, Rosalie and the two boys. Anse—Anson Carmichael IV—was the good son, decent family man, sober, steady, predictable. The other one, Ronald, hadn’t worked out quite as expected. “Have you heard what’s going on?” Anse asked.
“The fire? The critters from Mars? Yes. Rosalie called me about it about half an hour ago. I’ve been watching the teevee. I can see the smoke from out here on the porch.”
“Dad, are you going to be all right?” There was an unmistakable undertone of tension in Anse’s voice. “The wind’s blowing east to west, straight toward you. They say the Santa Susana fire’s moving into Ventura County already.”
“That’s a whole county away from me,” the Colonel said. “It would have to get to Camarillo and Ventura and a lot of other places first. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.—How are things down your way, Anse?”
“Here? We’re getting Santa Anas, sure, but the nearest fire’s up back of Anaheim. Not a chance it’ll move down toward us. Ronnie and Paul and Helena are okay too.” Mike Carmichael had never gone in for parenthood at all, but the Colonel’s baby brother Lee had managed to sire two kids in his short life. All of the Colonel’s immediate kin—his two sons and his daughter, and his niece and nephew Paul and Helena, who were in their late twenties now and married—lived in nice respectable suburban places along the lower coast, places like Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach and Newport Beach and La Jolla. Even Anse’s brother Ronald, who was not so nice and not so respectable, was down there. “It’s you I’m worried about, Dad.”
“Don’t. Fire comes anywhere within thirty miles of here, I’ll get in the car and drive up to Monterey, San Francisco, Oregon, someplace like that. But it won’t happen. We know how to cope with fires in this state. I’m more interested in these E-Ts. What the devil do you suppose they are? This isn’t all just some kind of movie stunt, is it?”
“I don’t think so, Dad.”
“No. Neither do I, really. Nobody’s that dumb, to set half of L.A. on fire for a publicity event. I hear that they’re in New York and London and a lot of other places too.”
“Washington?” Anse asked.
“Haven’t heard anything about Washington,” said the Colonel. “Haven’t heard anything from Washington, either. Odd that the President hasn’t been on the air yet.”
“You don’t think they’ve captured him, do you, Dad?”
He didn’t sound serious. The Colonel laughed. “This is all so crazy, isn’t it? Men from Mars marching through our cities.—No, I don’t suppose they’ve captured him. I figure he must be stashed away somewhere very deep, having an extremely lively meeting with the National Security Council. Wouldn’t you say so?”