Let the Fire Fall

Overhead planes with metal detection devices make a latticework pattern in the sky; in the dark woods men are stumbling and lurching and falling over each other as the search for the missing capsule continues. They are tired men, they have been searching for four days now…. And vituperation also continues…

U.S.S.R.: …furthermore, this government must ponder the possibilities that the U.S., or one of the many branches of intelligence operating within the U.S. might have located the missing capsule, as suggested by the distinguished representative of the republic of France…

France: …so in answer to the charge made against our great nation by the United States, our only possible reply can be to abstain from future meetings of this august body until such time as the missing capsule has been found and restored to the joint scientific body as advocated.

Great Britain: To suggest that our esteemed friend and ally in this magnificent effort to achieve communication with the first aliens to reach the soil of this planet is to cost the success of this body into gloom so deep and impenetrable that it becomes difficult to see any end in sight…

…we must therefore assume that those charges are being leveled by those whose gaol it is to breach the solid wall of friendship…. If the United States government has somehow located the missing capsule, it is undeniably on act of reasonableness in the face of the current mistrust that surrounds the entire issue. To doubt the motives of that great country is to place in jeopardy the alliance that has united us in common cause, and would serve only to risk material gains from trade and tourism that would continue to undermine our economy for a century…

Reliable sources today mode public a speech by Mao Tse Tung before a crowd estimated to number three hundred thousand in Red Square in Peking. In it he accused the imperialistic revisionist government of the Soviet Union of conspiring with the imperialistic oppressive forces of the United States to conceal the capsule from the rest of the peace-loving free world in order to obtain for themselves the extraterrestrial weapons and knowledge they have acquired. The plot to culminate in a full-scale war against the People’s Republic of China, Mao promised, would be resisted to the lost hundred million…

My dear Marguerita,

All the aliens have died! Such a waste; but then we do have all those cadavers to study, so perhaps we still shall be able to salvage something. And there is the ship. No matter what happens to people, you know, math is math, and science is science, and universal laws are universal laws. So I continue optimistic.

We shall remain here for the next three to five days, to be certain there is no danger of contamination. I would like to be able to leave immediately, but I must be careful and not antagonize any of the local people more than has already been done. You know that they are accusing us of poisoning the well that contained the strep bacilli” that infected many of our personnel. The local peasants were immune following long exposure, but they won’t believe that, and so they say we must have put germs in the well.

Anyway, I shall be home next week, and am looking forward to seeing you and the children…

your loving father

(signed) Daddy

March 2, 1973

Dear Matt,

This is probably illegal. I have been sworn to secrecy, but I think I’ll interpret that as secrecy concerning the location of the estate where I live now. We have a twenty-man board in charge of the Star Child’s Core and Development. I’m one of them. Also in residence at the estate-prison. A fantastic place: thirty-four-room house, hospital wing, nursery, staff’s wing, barracks for the guards, several large guest houses. Swimming pool, tennis court, stables…. While the nutty debate goes on back at the U.N.—what to feed the baby, how to train him, all that, here he is established, and I guess that here he’ll stay. I am so depressed that I could cry. Oh, for a shoulder! If I tried it with any of this group here I might short-circuit a snooper and electrocute the poor guy. Everybody’s on agent here… except me, I think.

To get to the point of this breach of security. I have a vacation coming up in a couple of months, and I need to be with someone I can talk to, really talk to and scream and cry. May I come to your house?

Love to Lisa and the children.

(signed) Winifred

Dear Winifred,

Please do come here, whenever you can. No time now for writing. See you soon. M.

Please excuse Matt’s scrawl, Winifred. He is working so hard and there doesn’t seem to be much time any more. You know the government condemned our property to build a superhighway to the alien ship, so we had to move and now we’re in a thing that looks like a wasp’s nest. There are over two hundred houses all stacked up against a hillside. But we do have room and we are very eager to see you. The children are fine. Blake grows and grows. He has six teeth and is walking and even says a few things. Nine months!

Obie Cox returned from his tour of the states last-week a rich man, according to the rumors. It must have paid well. He’s planning to tour Europe starting in June, the first anniversary of the aliens’ landing. I wish we could trace Blake’s mother and make the adoption legal, but no luck so for. I hate to think of Obie as his father. What a motley crew. Dee Dee, Billy Warren Smith, a fat, mildly crooked little lawyer, and Everett Slocum, the ex-pharmacist, of whom it is said, don’t send your small son to have a prescription filled by him. But enough for now. When you arrive we’ll gossip properly. Do come when you can and stay as long as you like.

love,

(signed) Lisa