and Anson the boy’s—the newest Anson Carmichael in the long sequence. Some things would never change.
The Colonel’s library was gone forever, but at Frank’s suggestion Andy succeeded in downloading books from libraries as far away as Washington and New York, and Frank spent much of his time reading, now. History was his great passion. He had not known much about the world that had existed before the Entities, but he spent endless hours now discovering it, Roman history, Greek, British, French, the whole human saga swimming about in his bedazzled mind, a horde of great names all mixed together, builders and destroyers both, Alexander the Great, William the Conqueror, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Augustus, Hitler, Stalin, Winston Churchill, Genghis Khan.
He knew that California had once been a part of the country that had been known as the United States of America, and he pored over that country’s history, too, swallowing it whole, learning how it had been put together out of little states and then had nearly come apart and had been united again, supposedly for all time, and had grown to be the most powerful nation in the world. He heard for the first time the names of its famous presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and the two great generals Grant and Eisenhower, who had become presidents also.
The names and details quickly lost themselves in a chaotic welter. But the patterns remained discernible enough, how all through history countries and empires had been formed, had grown to greatness, had overreached themselves and crumbled and been replaced by new ones, while in each of those countries and empires people constantly struggled toward creating a civilization built on justice, on fairness, on open opportunity in life for all. The world had, perhaps, finally been on the verge of attaining those things just when the Entities arrived. Or so it seemed to him, anyway, half a conquered century later, knowing nothing but what he could find in the books that Andy plundered for him from the on-line archives of the conquered world.
No one spoke of the Resistance now, or of assassinating Entities, or of anything much but the need to get the crops planted on time and to bring in a good harvest and to look after the livestock. Frank had not lost his hatred for the Entities who had stolen the world and killed his father. It was practically in his genes, that hatred. Nor had he forgotten the things Cindy had said to him the day he had returned from Los Angeles to find the ranch in ruins. That conversation—the last one he had ever had with Cindy, for she had died a few days later, peacefully, surrounded by people who loved her—was forever in the back of his mind, and now and again he took out the ideas she had expounded and looked at them for a while, and then put them away again. He could see the strength of them. He understood the worth of them. He would pass them dutifully along to his children. But he saw no practical way to give them any life.
On an April day in the third year after the bombing, with the rainy season finished for the year and the air warm and fragrant, Frank set out across the ravine to Khalid’s compound, where Khalid and Jill and their many children lived apart from the others in an ever-expanding settlement.
Frank went there often to visit with Khalid and sometimes with his gentle, elusive son Rasheed. He found it curiously comforting to spend time with them, savoring the peacefulness that was at the core of their souls, watching Khalid carve his lovely sculptures, abstract forms now rather than the portraits of earlier years.
He liked also to talk with Khalid about God. Allah, is what Khalid called Him, but Khalid said that it made little difference what name one used for God, so long as one accepted the truth of His wisdom and perfection and omnipotence. No one had ever said much to Frank about God while he was growing up, nor could he find much evidence for His existence as he contemplated the bloody saga that was human history. But Khalid believed unquestioningly in Him. “It is a matter of faith,” Khalid said softly. “Without Him, there is no meaning in the world. How could the world exist, if He had not fashioned it? He is the Lord of the Universe. And He is our protector: the Compassionate, the Merciful. To Him alone do we turn for help.”
“If God is our compassionate and merciful protector,” said Frank, “why did He send the Entities to us? And, for that matter, why did He create sickness and death and war and all other evil things?”
Khalid smiled. “I asked these same questions when I was a small boy. You must understand that God’s ways are not for us to question. He is beyond our comprehension. But those who are rightly guided by God, they shall surely triumph. As is revealed on the very first page of this book.” And he held out to Frank his old, worn copy of the Koran, the one that he had carried around from place to place all his life.
The problem of the existence of God continued to mystify Frank. Again and again he went to Khalid for instruction; and again and again he came away unconvinced, and yet still fascinated. He wanted the world to have pattern and meaning; and he could see that for Khalid it did; and yet he could not help wishing that God had given the world some tangible evidence of His presence, revealing Himself not just to specially chosen prophets who had lived long ago in far-off lands, but in modern times, day in and day out, everywhere and to everyone. God remained invisible, though. “God’s ways are not for us to question,” Khalid would say. “He is beyond our comprehension.” The ways of the Entities were also, apparently, not for us to question; they were as mysterious in their aloofness as was God, and just as incomprehensible. But the Entities had been visible from the first. Why would God not show Himself to His people even for a moment?
When he went to visit with Khalid, Frank usually would stop also at the nearby cemetery to pass a quick moment at the graves of his father and mother, and at Cindy’s grave; and sometimes at those of others who had died in the bombing attack, Steve and Peggy and Leslyn and James and the rest, and even the graves of people of the olden days whom he had never known, the Colonel and the Colonel’s son Arise and Andy’s grandfather Doug. It gave him a sense of the long past, of the continuity of human life across time, to walk among the resting-places of all these people and contemplate the lives they had led and the things they had sought to achieve.
But this day he never quite got as far as the graveyard, because he was only a few paces along the path when he heard Andy calling to him in an oddly hoarse voice from the porch of the communications center. “Frank! Frank! Get in here, on the double!”
“What is it?” Frank asked. He took in at a glance Andy’s flushed face, his staring eyes. Andy looked badly shaken: stunned, almost dazed. “Something wrong?”
Andy shook his head. His lips were moving, but nothing coherent seemed to be coming out. Frank ran to him. The Entities, Andy seemed to be saying. The Entities. The Entities. He sounded so strange: thick-tongued, almost inaudible. Drunk, maybe?
“What about them?” Frank asked. “Is a party of Entities heading toward the ranch right now? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No. No. Nothing like that.” And then, with an effort:
“They’re leaving, Frank!”
“Leaving?” Frank blinked. The unexpected word hit him with enormous force. What are you talking about, Andy? “Leaving where?”
“Leaving the Earth. Packing up, clearing out!” Andy’s eyes looked wild. “Some are gone already. The rest will be going soon.”
Strange, incomprehensible words. They fell upon Frank like an avalanche. But they had no meaning at first, any more than an avalanche would, only impact. They were mere noises without relevance to anything Frank could understand.
The Entities are leaving the Earth. Leaving, packing, clearing out.
What? What? What? Gradually Frank decoded what Andy had said, extracting actual concepts from it, but even so he had trouble getting his mind fully around it. Leaving? The Entities? Andy was speaking craziness. He must be in some delusional state. All the same, Frank felt a dizzying wave of astonishment and bewilderment engulf him. Almost without thinking he looked up, staring into the sky, as though he might find it full of Entity starships this very minute, dwindling and vanishing against the blueness. But all he saw was the great arching dome of the heavens and a few fluffy clouds off to the east.
Then Andy seized his wrist, tugging at him, drawing him into the communications center. Pointing at the screen of the nearest computer, he said, “I’m pulling it in from everywhere—New York, London, Europe, a bunch of places. Including Los Angeles. It’s been happening all morning. They’re packing up, getting aboard their ships, moving on out. In some areas they’re completely gone already. You can walk right into their compounds, nothing to stop you. Nobody’s there.”
“Let me see.”
Frank peered at the screen. Words sprawled across it. Andy touched a button; the words moved along, other words took their place. The words, like Andy’s spoken ones of a few moments before, were reluctant to yield any meaning to him. Frank conjured significance out of them slowly, with a great effort. Leaving… leaving… leaving. It
