Also, there was that sir. sir. That damned snotty That damned snotty sir. sir.

'Boss?' Owen sounding Just a tad nervous now, and he was right to sound nervous, Jesus love him. 'Who gives-'

'Common channel, Freddy,' Kurtz said. 'Key me in.'

The Kiowa, much lighter than the gunships, caught a gust of wind and took a giddy bounce. Kurtz and Freddy ignored it. Freddy keyed him wide.

'Listen up, boys,' Kurtz said, looking at the four gunships hanging in a line, glass dragonflies above the trees and beneath the clouds. Just ahead of them was the swamp and the vast pearlescent tilted dish with its surviving crew - or whatever they were - standing beneath its aft lip.

'Listen now, boys, Daddy's gonna sermonize. Are you listening? Answer up.'

Yes, yes, affirmative, affirm, roger that (with an occasional sir thrown in, but that was all right; there was a difference between forgetfulness and insolence). (with an occasional sir thrown in, but that was all right; there was a difference between forgetfulness and insolence).

'I'm not a talker, boys, talking's not what I do, but I want you to know that this is not repeat not not a case of what you see is what you get. What you a case of what you see is what you get. What you see see is about six dozen gray, apparently unsexed humanoids standing around naked as a loving God made them and you say, is about six dozen gray, apparently unsexed humanoids standing around naked as a loving God made them and you say, some some would say anyway, "Why, those poor folks, all naked and unarmed, not a cock or a cunt to share among em, pleading for mercy there by their crashed intergalactic Trailways, and what kind of a would say anyway, "Why, those poor folks, all naked and unarmed, not a cock or a cunt to share among em, pleading for mercy there by their crashed intergalactic Trailways, and what kind of a dog dog, what kind of a monster monster could hear those pleading voices and go in just the same?" And I have to tell you, boys, that I am that dog, I am that monster, I am that post-industrial post-modern cryptofascist politically incorrect male cocka-rocka warpig, praise Jesus, and for anyone listening in I am Abraham Peter Kurtz, USAF Retired, serial number 241771699, and I am leading this charge, I'm the Lieutenant Calley in charge of this particular Alice's Restaurant Massacree.' could hear those pleading voices and go in just the same?" And I have to tell you, boys, that I am that dog, I am that monster, I am that post-industrial post-modern cryptofascist politically incorrect male cocka-rocka warpig, praise Jesus, and for anyone listening in I am Abraham Peter Kurtz, USAF Retired, serial number 241771699, and I am leading this charge, I'm the Lieutenant Calley in charge of this particular Alice's Restaurant Massacree.'

He took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the hovering helicopters.

'But fellows, I'm here to tell you that the grayboys have been messing with us since the late nineteen-forties, and I have been messing with them since the late nineteen-seventies, and I can tell you that just because a fellow comes walking toward you with his hands raised saying I surrender, that doesn't mean, praise Jesus, that he doesn't have a pint of nitroglycerine shoved up his ass. Now the big old smart goldfish who go swimming around in the think-tanks, most of those guys say the grayboys came when we started lighting off atomic and hydrogen bombs, that they came to that the way bugs come to a buglight. I don't know about that, I am not a thinker, I leave the thinking to others, leave it to the cabbage, cabbage got the head on him, as the saying goes, but there's nothing wrong with my eyes, fellows, and I tell you those grayboy sons of bitches are as harmless as a wolf in a henhouse. We have taken a good many of them over the years, but not one has lived. When they die, their corpses decompose rapidly and turn into exactly the sort of stuff you see down there, what you lads call Plpley fungus. Sometimes they explode. Got that? They explode explode. The fungus they carry - or maybe it's the fungus that's in charge, some of the think-tank goldfish believe that might be the case - dies easily enough unless it gets on a living host, I say again living host living host, and the host it seems to like the best, fellows, praise Jesus, is good old homo sap homo sap. Once you've got it so much as under the nail of your little finger, it's Katie bar the door and Homer run for home.'

This was not precisely the truth - not precisely anywhere near the truth, as a matter of fact - but nobody fought for you as ferociously as a scared soldier. This Kurtz knew from experience.

'Boys, our little gray buddies are telepathic, and they seem to pass this ability on to us through the air. We catch it even when we don't catch the fungus, and while you might think a little mind-reading could be fun, the sort of thing that would make you the life of the party, I can tell you what lies a little farther down that road: schizophrenia, paranoia schizophrenia, paranoia, separation from reality reality, and total I say again TOTAL FUCKING INSANITY TOTAL FUCKING INSANITY. The think-tank boys, God bless em, believe that this telepathy is relatively short-acting right now, but I don't have to tell you what could happen in that regard if the grayboys are allowed to settle in and be comfortable. I want you fellows to listen to what I'm going to say now very carefully want you to listen as if your lives depended on it, all right? When they they take take us us, boys - say again, when they they take take us - us - and you all know there have been abductions, most people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are lying through their asshole neurotic teeth, but not all - those who are let go have often undergone implants. Some are nothing but instruments - transmitters, perhaps, or monitors of some sort - but some are living things which eat their hosts, grow fat, and then tear them apart. These implants have been put in place by the very creatures you see down there, milling around all naked and innocent. They claim there's no infection among them even though we know they are infected right up the ying-yang and the old wazoo and everywhere else. I have seen these things at work for twenty-five years or more, and I tell you this is and you all know there have been abductions, most people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are lying through their asshole neurotic teeth, but not all - those who are let go have often undergone implants. Some are nothing but instruments - transmitters, perhaps, or monitors of some sort - but some are living things which eat their hosts, grow fat, and then tear them apart. These implants have been put in place by the very creatures you see down there, milling around all naked and innocent. They claim there's no infection among them even though we know they are infected right up the ying-yang and the old wazoo and everywhere else. I have seen these things at work for twenty-five years or more, and I tell you this is it it, this is the invasion, this is the Super Bowl of Super Bowls, and you fellows are on defense. They are not not helpless little ETs, boys, waiting around for someone to give them a New England TEL phone card so they can phone home, they are a helpless little ETs, boys, waiting around for someone to give them a New England TEL phone card so they can phone home, they are a disease disease. They are cancer, praise Jesus, and boys, we're one big hot radioactive shot of chemotherapy. Do you hear me, boys?' No affirmatives this time. No rogers, no I-copy-thats. Raw cheers, nervous and neurotic, jigging with eagerness. The comlink bulged with them.

'Cancer, boys. They are cancer They are cancer. That's the best I can put it, although as you know, I'm no talker. Owen, do you copy?'

'Copy, boss.' Flat. Flat and calm, damn him. Well, let him be cool. Let him be cool while he still could. Owen Underhill was all finished. Kurtz raised the paper hat and looked at it admiringly. Owen Underhill was over. over.

'What is it down there, Owen? What is it shuffling around that ship? What is it forgot to put on their pants and their shoes before they left the house this morning?'

'Cancer, boss.'

'That's right. Now you give the order and in we go. Sing it out, Owen.' And, with great deliberation, knowing that the men in the gunships would be watching him (never had he given such a sermon, never, and not a word of it preplanned, unless in his dreams), he turned his own hat around backward.

7

Owen watched Tony Edwards turn his Mets cap around so that the bill pointed down the nape of his neck, heard Bryson and Bertinelli racking the .50s, and understood this was really happening. They were going hot. He could get in the car and ride or stand in the road and get run down. Those were the only choices Kurtz had left him.

And there was something more, something bad he remembered from long ago, when he had been - what? Eight? Seven? Maybe even younger. He had been out on the lawn of his house, the one in Paducah, his father still at work, his mother off somewhere, probably at the Grace Baptist, getting ready for one of her endless bake sales (unlike Kurtz, when Randi Underhill said praise Jesus, she meant it), and an ambulance had pulled up next door, at the Rapeloews'. No siren, but lots of flashing lights. Two men in jumpsuits very much like the coverall Owen now wore had gone running up the Rapeloews' walk, unfolding a gleaming stretcher. Never even breaking stride. It was like a magic trick.

Less than ten minutes later they were back out with Mrs Rapeloew on the stretcher. Her eyes had been closed. Mr Rapeloew came along behind her, not even bothering to close the door. Mr Rapeloew, who was Owen's Daddy's age, looked suddenly as old as a grampy. It was another magic trick. Mr Rapeloew glanced to his right as the men loaded his wife into the ambulance and saw Owen kneeling on his lawn in his short pants and playing with his ball. They say it was a stroke! They say it was a stroke! Mr Rapeloew called. Mr Rapeloew called. St Mary's Memorial! Tell your mother, Owen! St Mary's Memorial! Tell your mother, Owen! And then he climbed into the back of the ambulance and the ambulance drove away. For the next five minutes or so Owen continued to play with his hall, throwing it up and catching it, but in between throws and catches he kept looking at the door Mr Rapeloew had left open and thinking he ought to close it. That closing it would be what his mother called a Christian Act of Charity. And then he climbed into the back of the ambulance and the ambulance drove away. For the next five minutes or so Owen continued to play with his hall, throwing it up and catching it, but in between throws and catches he kept looking at the door Mr Rapeloew had left open and thinking he ought to close it. That closing it would be what his mother called a Christian Act of Charity.

Finally he got up and crossed to the Rapeloews' lawn. The Rapeloews had been good to him. Nothing really special ('Nothing to get up in the night and write home about,' his mother would have said), but Mrs Rapeloew made lots of cookies and always remembered to save him some; many were the bowls of frosting and cookie-dough he had scraped clean in chubby, cheery Mrs Rapeloew's kitchen. And Mr Rapeloew had shown him how to make paper airplanes that really flew. Three different kinds. So the Rapeloews deserved charity, Christian charity, but when he stepped through the open door of the Rapeloews' house, he had known perfectly well that Christian charity wasn't the reason he was there. Doing Christian charity did not make your dingus hard.

For five minutes - or maybe it was fifteen minutes or half an hour, the time passed like time in a dream - Owen had just walked around in the Rapeloews' house, doing nothing, but all the time his dingus had been just as hard as a rock, so hard it throbbed like a second heartbeat, and you would think something like that would hurt, but it hadn't, it had felt good, and all these years later he recognized that silent wandering for what it had been: foreplay, The fact that he had nothing against the Rapeloews, that he in fact liked liked the Rapeloews, somehow made it even better. If he was caught (he never was), he could say I the Rapeloews, somehow made it even better. If he was caught (he never was), he could say I dunno dunno if asked why he did it, and be telling the God's honest. if asked why he did it, and be telling the God's honest.

Not that he did so much. In the downstairs bathroom he found a toothbrush with Dick printed on it. Dick was Mr Rapeloew's name. Owen tried to piss on the bristles of Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush, that was what he wanted to do, but his dingus was too hard and no piss would come out, not a single drop. So he spat on the bristles instead, then rubbed the ,pit in and put the brush back in the toothbrush holder. In the kitchen, he poured a glass of water over the electric stoveburners. Then he took a large china serving platter from the sideboard. 'They said it was the stork,' Owen said, holding the platter over his head. 'It must be a baby, because he said it was a stork.' And then he heaved the platter into the comer, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. Once that was done he had fled from the house. Whatever had been inside him, the thing that had made his dingus hard and his eyeballs feel too big for their sockets, the shattering sound of the plate had broken it, popped it like a pimple, and if his parents hadn't been so worried about Mrs Rapeloew, they almost certainly would have seen something wrong with him. As it was, they probably just assumed that he was worried about Mrs R., too. For the next week he had slept little, and what sleep he did get had been haunted by bad dreams. In one of these, Mrs Rapeloew came home from the hospital with the baby the stork had brought her, only the baby was black and dead. Owen had been all but consumed with guilt and shame (never to the point of confessing, however; what in God's name would he have said when his Baptist mother asked him what had possessed him), and yet he never forgot the blind pleasure of standing in the bathroom with his shorts down around his knees, trying to piss on Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush, or the thrill that had gusted through him when the serving platter shattered. If he had been older, he would have come in his pants, he supposed. The purity was in the senselessness; the joy was in the sound of the shatter; the afterglow was the slow and pleasurable wallow in remorse for having done it and the fear of being caught. Mr Rapeloew had said it was a stork, but when Owen's father came in that night, he told him it was a stroke. That a blood-vessel in Mrs Rapeloew's brain had sprung a leak and that was a stroke.

And now here it was again, all of that.

Maybe this time I will come, he thought. It'll certainly be a lot goddam grander than trying to piss on Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush It'll certainly be a lot goddam grander than trying to piss on Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush. And then, as he turned his own hat around: Same basic concept, though. Same basic concept, though.

'Owen?' Kurtz's voice. 'Are you there, son? If you don't roger me right now, I'm going to assume you either can't or won't-'

'Boss, I'm here.' Voice steady. In his mind's eye he saw a sweaty little boy holding a china serving platter over his head. 'Boys, are you ready to kick a little interstellar ass?'

A roar of affirmation that included one goddam right goddam right and one and one let's tear em up. let's tear em up.

'What do you want first, boys?'

Squad Anthem and and Anthem Anthem and and Fucking Stones, right now! Fucking Stones, right now!

'Anyone want out, sing out.'

Radio silence. On some other frequency where Owen would never go again, the grayboys were pleading in famous voices. Starboard and below was the little Kiowa OH-58. Owen didn't need binoculars to see Kurtz with his own hat now turned around, Kurtz watching him. The newspaper was still on his lap, now for some reason folded into a triangle. For six years Owen Underhill had needed no second chances, which was good because Kurtz didn't give them - in his heart Owen supposed he had always known that. He would think about that later, however. If he had to. One final coherent thought flared in his mind - You're the cancer, Kurtz the cancer, Kurtz, you - and then died. Here was a fine and perfect darkness in its place.

'Blue Group, this is Blue Boy Leader. Come in on me. Commence firing at two hundred yards. Avoid hitting the Blue Boy if possible, but we are going to sweep those motherfuckers clean. Conk, play the Anthem.'

Gene Conklin flicked a switch and racked a CD in the Discman sitting on the floor of Blue Boy Two. Owen, no longer inside himself, leaned forward in Blue Boy Leader and cranked the volume.

Mick Jagger, the voice of the Rolling Stones, filled his earphones. Owen raised his hand, saw Kurtz snap him a salute - whether sarcastic or sincere Owen neither knew nor cared - and then Owen brought his arm down. As Jagger sang it out, sang the Anthem, the one they always played when they went in hot, the helicopters dropped, tightened, and flew to target.

8

The grayboys - the ones that were left - stood beneath the shadow of their ship which lay in turn at the end of the shattered aisle of trees it had destroyed in its final descent. They made no initial effort to run or hide; in fact half of them actually stepped forward on their naked toeless feet, squelching in the melted snow, the muck, and the scattered fuzz of reddish-gold moss. These faced the oncoming line of gunships, long-fingered hands raised, showing that they were empty. Their huge black eyes gleamed in the dull daylight.

The gunships did not slow, although all of them heard the final transmissions briefly in their heads: Please don't hurt us, we are helpless, we are dying Please don't hurt us, we are helpless, we are dying. With that, twining through it like a pigtail, came the voice of Mick Jagger: 'Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man Of wealth and taste; I've been around for many a long year, stolen many man's soul and faith . . .' 'Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man Of wealth and taste; I've been around for many a long year, stolen many man's soul and faith . . .'

The gunships heeled around as briskly as a marching band doing a square turn on the fiftyyard line of the Pose Bowl, and the .50s opened up. The bullets plowed into the snow, struck dead branches from already wounded trees, struck pallid little sparks from the edge of the great ship. They ripped into the bunched grayboys standing with their arms upraised and tore them apart. Arms spun free of rudimentary bodies, spouting a kind of pink sap. Heads exploded like gourds, raining a reddish backsplash on their ship and their shipmates - not blood but that mossy stuff, as if their heads were full of it, not really heads at all but grisly produce baskets. Several of them were cut in two at the midsection and went down with their hands still raised in surrender. As they fell, the gray bodies went a dirty white and seemed to boil.

Mick Jagger confided: 'I was around when Jesus Christ had His moment of doubt and pain . . .' 'I was around when Jesus Christ had His moment of doubt and pain . . .'

A few grays, still standing under the lip of the ship, turned as if to run, but there was nowhere to go. Most of them were shot down immediately. The last few survivors - maybe four in all - retreated into the scant shadows. They seemed to be doing something, fiddling with something, and Owen had a horrible premonition.

'I can get them!' came crackling over the radio. That was Deforest in Blue Boy Four, almost panting with eagerness. And, anticipating Owen's order to go for it, the Chinook dropped almost to ground-level, its rotors kicking up snow and muddy water in a filthy blizzard, battering the underbrush flat.

'No, negative, belay that, back off, resume station plus fifty!' Owen shouted, and whacked Tony's shoulder. Tony, looking only slightly odd in the transparent mask over his mouth and nose, yanked back on the yoke and Blue Boy Leader rose in the unsteady air. Even over the music - the mad bongos, the chorus going Hoo-hoo Hoo-hoo, 'Sympathy for the Devil' hadn't played through to its conclusion even a single time, at least not yet - Owen could hear his crew grumbling. The Kiowa, he saw, was already small with distance. Whatever his mental peculiarities might be, Kurtz was no fool- And his instincts were exquisite.

'Ah, boss ' Deforest, sounding not just disappointed but on fire.

'Say again, say again, return to station, Blue Group, return-' return-'

The explosion hanmered him back in his seat and tossed the Chinook upward like a toy. Beneath the roar, he heard Tony Edwards cursing and wrestling with the yoke. There were screams from behind them, but while most of the crew was injured, they lost only Pinky Bryson, who had been leaning out the bay for a better look and fen when the shockwave hit.

'Got it, got it, got it,' Tony yammered, but Owen thought it was at least thirty seconds before Tony actually did, seconds that felt like hours. On the sound systems, the Anthem had cut off, a fact that did not bode well for Conk and the boys in Blue Boy Two.

Tony swung Blue Boy Leader around, and Owen saw the windscreen Perspex was cracked in two places. Behind them someone was still screaming - Mac Cavanaugh, it turned out, had somehow managed to lose two fingers.