The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg

braid. The Colonel knew most of the Army men at least by sight, and a couple of the Air Force ones. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph F. Steele, gave the Colonel a warm smile. They had served together in Saigon in ‘67 under General Matheson, when the Colonel of future times had been a brand-new second lieutenant assigned to the Field Advisory Unit of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, dear old gummed-up MAC-V, as an interpreter, and Joe Steele, four years younger and a green kid just out of West Point, had started out with some exceedingly humble flunky position for MAC-Vs intelligence guys, though he had risen very quickly. And had kept on rising ever since.
    Buckley went around the room, making introductions. “The Secretary of Defense, Mr. Gallagher—” A slight, almost inconsequential-looking man, lantern jaw, close-cropped gray hair forming a kind of skullcap on his narrow head, formidable glint of Jesuitical intelligence and dedication in his chilly dark-brown eyes. “The Secretary of Communications, Ms. Crawford—” Elegant woman, coppery glints in her dark hair, a Native American sharpness to her cheekbones and lips. “The Senate Majority Leader, Mr. Bacon of your very own state—” Rangy, athletic-looking fellow, probably a terrific tennis player. “Dr. Kaufman of Harvard’s physics department—” Plump, sleepy-looking, badly dressed. “The Presidential Science Advisor, Dr. Elias—” Impressive woman, stocky, self-contained, a mighty fortress unto herself. The heads of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Chief of Naval Operations. The Marine Commandant. The top brass of the Army and Air Force as well. The Secretaries of the Army and Navy. And so on and so on, a goodly number in all, the high and the mighty of the land. The Colonel noticed that Buckley had left two men in civilian clothes completely unintroduced, and assumed he had some good reason for that. CIA, he supposed, something like that.
    “And your own tide these days, Lloyd?” the Colonel asked quietly, when Buckley seemed to have finished.
    Buckley seemed nonplussed at that. It was the Vice President who said, while Buckley merely gaped, “Mr. Buckley is the National Security Advisor, Colonel Carmichael.”
    Ah, so. A long way up from being an assistant secretary of state for cultural affairs. But of course Buckley had surely been angling for something like this all the time, turning his expertise in anthropology and history and the psychology of nationalistic fervor into credentials for a quasi- military post of Cabinet status in this era of resurgent cultural rivalries with roots going back beyond medieval times. The Colonel murmured something in an apologetic tone about not keeping up with the news as assiduously as he once did, now that he was retired to his hillside walnut groves and his almond trees.
    There was action at the conference-room door, now. A flurry among the guards; new people arriving. The rest of the passengers from the Colonel’s cross-country flight filed in at last: Joshua Leonards, the rotund UCLA anthropologist, who with his untrimmed red beard and ratty argyle sweater looked like some nineteenth-century Russian anarchist, and Peter Carlyle-Macavoy, the British astronomer from the CalTech extraterrestrial-intelligence search program, extremely elongated of body and fiercely bright of eye, and the shopping- mall abductee, Margaret Something-or-Other, a petite, rather attractive woman of thirty or so who was either still in shock from her experiences or else was under sedation, because she had said essentially nothing during the entire journey from California.
    “Good,” Buckley said. “We’re all here, now. This would be a good moment to bring our newcomers up to date on the situation as it now stands.” He clapped a data wand to his wrist—that was interesting, the Colonel thought, a man of Buckley’s age has had a biochip