Invasion

hell.
        Or to limbo.
        Or to nirvana.
        Or to (fill in your favorite paradise).
        Death is not a oneness with
        Nature.
        Or with God.
        Or with the universe.
        Death is not reincarnation.
        Death does not just happen to other people.
        Death is not just what the villain deserves.
        Death is not just a novelist's device.
        Death is not heroic.
        Death is not just for the movies.
        Death is not just a stage we go through.
        Death is not mutable.
        Death is not beatable.
        Death is not cheatable.
        Death is not a joke.
        Death. Is. Real. And. Final.
        Final.
        Forever.
        And that's it.
        So what else is there for a man to do but live while he can? What else makes sense but grabbing all the love and joy that you can, while you can, and to hell with trying to change the unchangeable? To hell with a writer's conscience, his morals, his vision, and his mission.
        Yet here I was thinking about a second book. And I knew that, should we all survive (or even if I survived alone), the story would be told. I would do the telling. The agony of creation would be en dured.
        But why?
        Not to educate the masses, surely. You know where I stand on that issue.
        And not to entertain. There are dozens of writers who are far more clever, much wittier, and much more entertaining than I could ever hope to be.
        I'm no good at inventing thrills and chills, perhaps because the very worst in life has happened to me and pales the product of my imagination (although I still read thrillers and enjoy them).
        Why, then, this book?
        I suppose because, in the war, my diary became an important outlet for me. It was an unspeaking counselor, a silent psychiatrist, a priest to whom I could confess, wail, scream, whisper, vomit out the torment. And now, if we survived the ordeal at
        Tim-berlake Farm, I could best cleanse my soul of the stain if I put the story down on paper.
        And having written it, why not make a buck or two? More money would mean a better chance of enjoying life fully.
        I am being dangerously frank.
        Decry my attitude if you wish. Feel superior. Be my guest. I have nothing to lose.
        But now that's been said, I must also say that there was another reason why I felt driven toward the writing of a second book. As I stood there in the snow, I sensed that this story had a unique aspect which demanded that it be told-not for the benefit of other men, not for the ages, but for something larger and greater than the fame-wealth-acceptance that most writers seek, something altogether indefinable.
        Did the story have to be told for them-for the aliens?
        But that made no sense. So far as I could see, they thought of us as animals, protein, mindless creatures, meat on the hoof. Even if my book were published and a copy placed before them, they most likely would not realize that writing and the making of books were signs of an intelligent species. To them a book might be as unremarkable an object as a stone or a clod of earth, for they might have evolved telepathy before language, thus making language unnecessary.
        To them, written symbols might be inconceivable. After all, if our farmhouse-a four-walled geometric structure of some sophistication when compared to a rabbit warren or a bear's den-was no indication to them that we were specimens of an intelligent species with whom they ought to communicate, with whom they should make every effort to be understood rather than feared, then no book would catch their notice or be at all meaningful to them.
        And yet I knew that I would write it. And knowing that much, having accepted it, I was able to get moving once more. I walked on toward Pastor's Hill, through wind and snow, feeling no better nor any worse for having made that decision. I was merely perplexed by it.
        I crossed the open fields and climbed the wooded slope of Pastor's Hill without encountering a single living creature born of this world or any other. On the crown of the hill, buffeted by the wind that roared through the bare branches and between the stark trunks of the trees, I stopped to rest.
        With one hand over my eyes in the manner of an Indian scout in an old movie, I searched to the west for the Johnson farm which lay atop a bald hill