EPILOGUE

DEAD RECKONING

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.

—John Keats

Alex Smith, 18 Bi-November, Mars Year i

Novato, California, Planet Earth

Now that I’ve reached the end of my story, I realize that I can actually add very little to the questions that remain about the invaders. My particular interest is speculative philosophy: what if, what might have been, what could be. My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to having read a few popular books and essays. Even so, it seems to me that Martina Kosnick’s conclusions regarding the sudden disappearance of the Martians are likely to remain unchallenged for the foreseeable future. I’ve assumed here that her rationale is absolutely correct.

No bacteria except terrestrial bugs were found in the bodies of the aliens—or in the Martian plant life. The fact that the aliens failed to bury any of their dead may point to their ignorance of bodily decay, which on Earth is caused by microbes; or it may just represent some peculiarity in their cultural heritage. So many questions like this have answers that are wholly based on supposition; the sad fact is, no one was ever able during those days to communicate with the Martians, either directly or indirectly, and much remains uncertain about their methods, motivations, and even the operation of their machines.

The composition of the Black Death, which the Martians employed with such deadly effect, also remains unknown, despite numerous attempts at synthesis; and the mechanism used to generate the sting-ray remains a puzzle, although the weapon appears to be based on some sort of laser technology. The terrible disasters at Alabaster Sands, Rancho Cucaracha, and Castle Rock have made experimenters somewhat wary of dissecting advanced Martian technology. The brown scum and dark dust that were a residue of the neutralized Black Death mostly vanished before it could be recovered, leaving just minute samples that have proven equally difficult to analyze.

The results of Professor Jarmann’s multitudinous dissections of the Martian bodies, his cutting and sawing and probing, have already been discussed earlier in this narrative. Almost everyone is familiar with the magnificent, almost complete alien specimen on display in the Natural History Museum of the California Academy of Sciences, and the detailed videos and photographs of the Martians that have been posted on the Internet.

A question of more immediate concern is the possibility, even the probability, of another invasion by the Martians. In my estimation, not nearly enough attention is being given to this threat. With every orbit of Mars, with every opposition of the two planets, we can anticipate another attack. If Singletown is right, and the Martians were unable to communicate with their lost expeditionary force, then it may take years, even decades, for them to analyze exactly what went wrong. But the reasons why they attacked Earth in the first place, whatever those are, are still valid, and the likelihood of their return is without question. Sooner or later “they’ll be back,” to paraphrase a famous California governor who spent the entire invasion period raising funds in Europe.

But maybe the Martian home world did communicate with its outriders on Earth. Maybe they’re already preparing a second strike force. If so, we must be ready. We have to keep watching the skies, and especially the Red Planet. We have to have defenses in place to fight the invaders wherever and whenever they land, immediately, before they can establish their bases and their war machines—and, if possible, even before they reach the Earth.

It does seem to me, though, that they’ve now lost one great advantage: the element of surprise. We now know they exist, and we now understand the threat that they pose to our species. Possibly they understand this and will be more cautious in any future attack. Possibly not.

No human being will ever be able to think about man’s place in the universe in quite the same way again. We’re not alone any longer. And our nearest neighbors, while they may be intelligent, are surely not our friends. Perhaps the only way that we’ll ever be able to rest at night is to take the fight to Mars itself. Analyzing the cold equations in this light, I really think that we have no choice: it’s us or them. Another war is surely inevitable.

We’ve learned a hard lesson here. We can never again regard our planet as a safe, secure hiding place for mankind. We can never again dismiss the unseen good or evil that may suddenly fall upon us from the depths of outer space. Maybe in the greater design of things the invasion from Mars was not without benefit: it’s robbed us of that serene confidence in the future that is the most fruitful source of decadence; it’s leveled our innocence. Human science has already benefited by the study of the Martian machines. The war has also done much to promote the community of man. We can only hope that the Martians have watched the ugly death of their pioneer settlers and have learned their lesson.

Before the alien ships landed, most of our scientists questioned the notion of intelligent life on other worlds. We simply had found no evidence to support the theory, despite the work of SETI and other such projects. Now we see things quite differently. If the Martians can travel through space, so can we. If the Martians exist, then others do as well, possible friends or possible foes, and we would be fools to ignore the opportunity they present.

It’s time for man to spread his wings and cast his seed beyond the confines of just one planet or one solar system. But right now that’s only a remote dream. The destruction of the Martian threat has to come first. To them, perhaps, and not to us, the future is ordained—unless we take the initiative, unless we carry the fight to the Red Planet.

For myself, I confess that the stress of my experience during the War of Two Worlds has left me with an abiding sense of insecurity. I sit in my office writing these words, and then suddenly I see again the red weed and the writhing flames, and I feel my house abandoned and desolate. I walk out to Novato Boulevard, and watch the vehicles passing by—an SUV filled with vacationers, a delivery van, a police car, a school bus—and suddenly I find myself escaping again with Mayer the Guardsman through the hot, brooding silence of a dark and dangerous night.

I suddenly come awake at three a.m., reliving my imprisonment with Reverend Lesley, and wondering what I could have done differently.

Why did I live while so many others died?

I see the Black Death darkening the silent streets of Dead-Francisco, and the contorted bodies scattered in its gutters; they rise up as one to accuse me, tattered and ragged and dog-bitten, they gibber at me and shake their fists, growling unintelligible mutterings of accusation. I know what they’re saying: “You lived, Smith. You survived!”

Those pale, ugly, even insane distortions of humanity are all I have left in the dungeons of the night; and when I finally come to my senses, cold and wretched in the damp, tossing sea of my bed, my heart galloping (ooh-lah, ooh-lah, ooh-lah), my lungs gasping, I find my wife sleeping the sleep of the just right next to me. She doesn’t understand these things. She doesn’t know the terror of my dreams. She can’t parse “ooh-lah.”

Then I go down to San Francisco and see the busy multitudes, the human ants, rebuilding their businesses in Market Street and the Embarcadero; and it seems to me that they’re nothing more than the pale riders of the past, ghosts and goblins haunting the streets that I have walked silent and empty, phantasms and zombies perambulating through a dead city, mocking the lives of real folks.

It’s strange, too, to stand on Mount Sutro, as I did the day before finishing this book, and see the great rows of townhouses, dim and blue through the haze of smoke and mist, vanishing at last into the vagueness of the sky; to view the people ambling to and fro among the flower beds in Golden Gate Park; to spy the sightseers gathering there about the stark Martian fighting-machine that still stands erect and silent by the empty Martian pit; to hear the tumult of playing children; and to recall the time when I saw it all bright and clear, hard and silent, under the dawn of that last great day, the day when I was preparing myself to die.

What really happened to me—and to us? All these questions that I have, and so very few answers. All I know is that my role in this great melodrama has yet to be concluded. Mindon, a wiser man than I, says that I spend way too much time contemplating my own navel, and he may be right.

Why did I live while so many others died, if not to bear witness to what happened to us?

Becky and I did decide on one possible answer, at least for ourselves—and one adopted by a great many others as well—to bring a new life into this world. Mélusine Elizabeth was born a few days ago, less than a year after the events recorded in this book. She’s different somehow than I ever expected, with strange dark eyes and an understanding beyond her age.

But the strangest thing of all, the one thing that I could never account for, was my wife’s unexpected reappearance in my life, and the miraculous fact that it happened to me twice. Most men only get one chance in life.

So I reach out and touch my Becky’s face again, and I take her warm hand in mine, and I feel the beating of her heart—and I marvel to think that I counted her, and that she counted me, among the disassociated dead.