K-PAX IV: A New Visitor From The Constellation Lyra

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was an unusually long construction delay on I-78 and, unfortunately, I missed the Monday morning staff meeting. By the time I got to the hospital Dr. Tewksbury and Filbert were already inside somewhere, according to Officer Wilson at the gate. “What’s going on, doc?” he called out as I waved past him. “There are apes all over the place!”

“One of our patients thinks she’s a chimpanzee,” I shouted jokingly.

“Gawd, I think she might be right!” he yelled back.

The lawn was in an uproar. I thought it was probably because Filbert was running around loose, stirring up trouble. But it wasn’t that—he and Tewksbury were nowhere to be seen. It was Jerry, having just returned with fled, who was causing all the commotion. But this wasn’t the Jerry that I, or any of the inmates, knew. He was standing against the front wall contemplating the grounds as if he had never seen any of it before. A group of patients were milling nearby, watching, whispering among themselves, waiting to see what he was going to do. He turned to look at them, as if noticing them for the first time. Slowly his arms came up and he ambled toward the group. Some of them backed away, apparently unsure of his intent. Howard, however, lifted his arms as well, and the two of them embraced. At this point the patients came up to him, one by one, to give him a hug and get one in return. He didn’t avoid their gazes, and he spoke a few words to each of them. When everyone had made contact, the entire group headed toward the back forty to greet the other residents of MPI. The excitement was contagious. Once they were sure who he was, they were all genuinely happy for Jerry, who had been one of their own. But I suspected that underneath the obvious warmth and affection they were all thinking the same thing: if fled can make such a radical change in the character and demeanor of someone who may be worse off than I am, why couldn’t she do the same for me?

Though most mental patients live in worlds of their own, they are nevertheless perfectly well aware that something about them isn’t quite right, and they certainly don’t enjoy their private hell. For the most part they try very hard to follow instructions, take their medications, get better. Despite our best efforts, however, we sometimes can’t help them. The Manhattan Psychiatric Institute is more tragic than most hospitals in this regard because we take in so many unique and difficult cases, often after other institutions have already treated them and made little progress with their ailments.

Now we seemed to have one less of those difficult cases, thanks to fled, who stood along the back wall watching the proceedings like a proud parent. I could see she was grinning, and even from a distance I detected a little twinkle in her eye. She saw me and loped over. “You can tell me later what happened here,” I said. “Right now we have an appointment with your alter ego.”

* * *

I asked fled to remain for a moment outside Room 520, where I found Dr. Tewksbury patiently waiting with Filbert. Virginia, too, had missed the Monday meeting because she had met them at the gate, brought them up, and remained with them until I arrived (Laura Chang chaired the meeting in her absence). As soon as I came in she excused herself.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for this?” I asked her, certain she would love to witness the proceedings (though she would never admit it).

“No, thanks. I’ve got a hospital to direct.” She went for the door before turning to add, with a hint of a smile, “Or is it a circus I’m running here?”

Filbert’s appearance didn’t surprise me. We had, after all, only recently enjoyed the company of one of his cousins—Okeemon the bonobo (not to mention fled herself). Filbert was a little bigger and more agitated than the hippie chimp, but otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. Consequently, I kept an eye on his hands.

It was the appearance of Ellen Tewksbury that shocked me. On the phone she sounded much like Giselle—young, petite, attractive (yes, it sometimes shows in the voice, which often reflects the confident feeling one has in her appearance). Dr. Tewksbury (“Tewks” I learned to call her) was none of those. She was, I would guess, in her early seventies, and considerably larger than I would have thought. Not fat, just huge. More than six feet tall and built like a tackle. Even her teeth were big, as were her heavy horn-rimmed glasses. I supposed one would have to be pretty hefty to handle animals as strong and unpredictable as chimpanzees. Her hair, on the other hand, was a strikingly bright red, and her hands were surprisingly small and soft.

Filbert seemed to be having a good time. Though all the papers had long been pilfered from Goldfarb’s desk and strewn everywhere, he delighted in opening and closing the drawers, sometimes reaching into one of them to pull out a forgotten pencil or paper clip, hooting to announce each new discovery. Finally, Tewks placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. That’s when he noticed fled standing in the doorway.

He ran for her. Neither his guardian nor I tried to stop him. He jumped into her arms and screamed with pleasure, as if she were his long-lost mother. Finally she whispered something in his ear, and he began, finally, to quiet down.

Tewksbury herself was unable to take her eyes off our alien visitor, as if a lifelong dream had come true. I managed a brief introduction and they clasped their hands together warmly. Filbert, though trying to remain calm as instructed, was obviously beside himself with joy, whirling and clapping and hanging onto one or the other’s arms, ignoring me altogether.

I reminded them why we were there, and suggested we get started on the procedure. Fled took her usual chair. I indicated that Tewks should take the one to the right of the desk. For his part, Filbert leaped onto the desk itself, facing fled. Finally, I sat down behind it and glanced at all three of them. “Are we ready?”

Fled and Tewksbury nodded. Filbert looked from one to the other, and he nodded, too.

I reminded the ethologist that we already had fled’s permission for the hypnosis procedure, that there was no risk of a perilous outcome, etc. She and Filbert nodded again. “Okay, then, here we go. Fled, I’m going to count forward from one to five, and when I get to five, you will find yourself in a deep—”

I didn’t hear her counting to herself, but her head slowly fell to her chest, and immediately she was “gone.” I tried to repeat exactly what I had done the previous time (I had reviewed the videotape at home), hoping for a similar result. “Just relax,” I whispered. “Close your eyes if you like. Now I’m going to speak to someone else. You may listen or not, as you wish. I’d like anyone with fled to please come forward and identify yourself….”

We waited for what seemed like a full minute before fled began to withdraw. Finally she shrank down as usual, apparently trying to make herself invisible. She seemed to take almost a fetal position, and became excruciatingly quiet.

At this point Filbert jumped off the desk and edged his way toward fled, who remained completely motionless. He inched closer until he was crouching right beside her. Gently he reached out and touched her face with a finger.

Fled, or whoever she was, seemed to relax a bit. Her hand came up and she stroked Filbert’s arm. He began to make some guttural noises to which fled’s alter ego did not respond. But he persisted with a kind of cooing and caressing of her face with the back of his hand, and then he circled around and began to groom her, picking imaginary insects from her back and shoulders. “Fled” responded with some clucking sounds of her own. This went on for several minutes until Tewks reached over and touched Filbert. He turned to her and began to sign a few words, and she relayed the message: “He says she’s afraid.”

“Can he ask her what she’s afraid of?”

She signed something to him, and he repeated it verbally to fled’s alter. We all waited for a minute or two before the hushed response came to Filbert to Tewks to me: “I’m afraid of the growl creatures.” The alter’s eyes darted around wildly.

“He means the dogs,” Tewksbury translated.

“Tell him to ask her what dogs she’s afraid of.”

Filbert’s head swiveled between Tewks and the alter as he translated the question and the response. “The dogs of the naked beasts who come to hurt.” He continued to groom the alter.

I had some idea of what she meant, of course, but what I really wanted to hear about was her relationship to fled. I asked Tewks, “Can you tell where she’s from? She’s not a bonobo, is she?”

(For the sake of brevity, I have omitted the various back-and-forth signing that ensued.) “No, she’s not a bonobo. She’s a lowland chimpanzee, probably from Congo, like Filbert. Otherwise, they would have a more difficult time communicating.”

“How old is she? Does she have a name?”

“She’s between two and three, and her name is Naraba.”

“Does she know where she is?”

“Yes, she’s been here before.”

“When?”

“She goes with fled.”

“She’s traveling with fled?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t like it here and prefers to hide from us.”

“Why did fled bring her here?”

“She found her in a cage.”

“Does she want to go back to Congo and live there as before?”

“Not unless the dogs go away.”

“What did the dogs do to her?”

The chimpanzee began to wail and pound the desk with her feet.

“Never mind,” I said. “We’ll come back to that later. Can you ask her if she knows who fled is and where she came from?”

“She knows fled has come to help her, but she doesn’t know where she came from.”

“Does she want to go with fled when she leaves us?”

“She would rather go back to her own home if it was safe to be there. Otherwise she will stay with fled.”

I contemplated the possibility of hypnotizing Naraba via Tewksbury and Filbert, as I had done with Robert Porter, but realized it would be virtually impossible to accomplish under the circumstances. But how else to re-visit her terrible childhood, her capture and removal from her native habitat, without seriously traumatizing her? Indeed, Naraba already appeared to be showing signs of mental stress: she had covered her head with her hands and started to rock back and forth. I called a temporary halt to the proceedings.

“Please take Filbert away for a moment while I speak to fled.”

Tewks called the chimpanzee back to her and hugged him while I brought fled back from under hypnosis. She blinked her eyes and waited for me to fill her in. “Fled, you have an alter called Naraba.”

“She’s not an alter. She’s a friend who travels with me sometimes.”

“Where did you find her?”

“In a roadside zoo.”

“What do you mean by ‘roadside’?”

“Anyone can build cages anywhere they wish and keep almost any animals they want in them. They charge admission fees and make money from them. They don’t even have to feed the animals. The patrons toss them marshmallows and candy and other shit like that. People are so fucking stupid!”

“These things are legal?”

“Quite legal, in every one of your states. The people who consider animals to be mindless ‘property’ are still in the vast majority, you know. It will be a while longer before that changes.”

“But what I wanted to know was, how did you find her? And has she been with you since then?”

“It’s only been a few days, gino. When I went to your west coast for a look at the beautiful pacific ocean, I landed near this goddamn roadside thing.”

“So why didn’t you tell me it was Naraba you saw on the videotape?”

“That wasn’t Naraba.”

“It wasn’t? Who was it?”

“Not a clue.”

“Then guess what—you have two alters. At least.”

“I told you before: these alters are filberts of your imagination.”

“Then please explain to me where they came from.”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Okay, we’ll get back to that later. Right now I’d like to return to your own childhood for a minute.”

“Haven’t we been over that?”

“I must have missed something.”

“Fyi, doctor, you miss almost everything.”

“Thanks, I’ll take that under advisement. For now, a question: when you were a very young trod, was your mother killed by another being? And did you witness it?”

For the first time since her arrival, her cocky demeanor vanished. She stared at me and her eyes suddenly filled with moisture. Weeping, I concluded, must be a universal phenomenon. “How did you know that?” she whimpered.

“I think your alter—your companion—told me. What happened to your mother?”

“It was an accident. An ap was running around and banged into her and knocked her down. The collision broke her neck and she died in an instant. No one could help her. It was just an accident….”

“That was after you were weaned, and you didn’t find out until someone showed you the hologram, right? But of course it was just like being there.”

Her mouth opened wide and she roared like a distraught lion. Huge tears rolled down her face and disappeared in the hair on her chin and chest.

I reached out and touched the top of her head. “I’m sorry, fled. I’m very sorry.”

“Beings die, even on K-PAX,” she snuffed.

So, my alien friend, I thought, you’re not so different from us after all. Tewks and Filbert also tried to console her, and she finally became her usual self. “Okay, folks,” I said, “I think that’s enough for today.” To fled I added, “But don’t go very far. I want to talk to you about Jerry.”

She had regained not only her composure, but also her attitude. “Why not just talk to him?” she snorted.

“Him, too,” I snorted back.

* * *

Filbert had a wonderful time on the lawn and so, for the most part, did the patients (except for those who are afraid of everything). He swung from the limbs of the big elm tree, went after Georgie’s football, ran all over the back forty. It’s remarkable how people, especially those who are institutionalized, respond to animals. We had cats a few years ago, but one of them bit an abusive patient, resulting in an infection and a lawsuit, and Goldfarb decided to call a halt to the feline companionship program. (The patient’s family lost the suit; he has since departed us, and is missed by no one.)

Even some of the staff joined in the fun, running around the lawn as if they were children again. When it was time to go, Howard, who sometimes acts as spokesperson for the patients, requested that I please let Dr. Tewksbury come back soon with Filbert.

“Is tomorrow soon enough?” I asked him. “We’ll need him for at least another visit.”

I escorted Tewks and her companion to the nearby garage where the van was parked. By that time Officer Wilson had been apprised of the situation. “Good-bye, Doc. Good-bye, Filbert.” I informed him that they would be back tomorrow. “I’ll be watching for youse,” he promised.

Filbert, holding our hands and walking between us, hardly elicited a stare from passersby. There probably isn’t a New Yorker who hasn’t seen something at least as weird. On the way to the van I thanked Tewks for coming and asked for her opinion on how we could do something to help Naraba.

“I think she would be a terrific candidate for a sanctuary,” she said. “There are some good ones in the warmer states. Want me to look into it for you?”

“That isn’t what I meant.” I explained my hypothesis that fled’s alter ego was actually a part of her, and they would probably be going back to K-PAX together. “I was hoping that you and Filbert might be able to tell her something to ease her fears while she’s here.”

“We could tell her that no one can harm her as long as she stays with fled.”

“Yeah. That’s all I could come up with, too.” I declined to mention that I wasn’t so sure of that anymore.

I didn’t know what Filbert would do when I said good-bye. I thought he might wrap his arms around me for a big hug, as he had done for some of the patients. Instead, he stuck out his hand. I flinched reflexively, but he only wanted to give mine a shake, not grab my gonads. “I didn’t teach him that,” said Tewks. “They do that in the wild, too. It means he reveres you more than the others.”

“Is that so? Well, thank you, Filbert. I consider that—”

“No, it’s not that kind of compliment. It’s because of your age. Chimpanzees respect their elders.”

“Oh. Well, I appreciate that just as much,” I lied.

“Sometimes they part with a kiss.”

“Does that show respect, too?”

“Nope. That indicates friendship.”

* * *

Back in the hospital I went immediately to look for Jerry. He wasn’t in his room, and his matchstick sculpture of the Institute was sitting on its pedestal unfinished and unattended. It seemed sad, in a way, as if the sculptor had died. It reminded me of the final works of Michelangelo, chipped stone blocks with only a hint of the ultimate figures still trapped inside.

I finally found him in the quiet room. He was reading an architecture book. Where he got it is anyone’s guess—it didn’t come from the hospital library. He was so engrossed that he didn’t even know I was there until I spoke to him.

“Hi, Jerry.”

He barely looked up. “Hi, Dr. Brewer. How are you?”

“Can’t complain. Especially after seeing you this way. There’s something I’d like to ask you, though.”

He was still poring over the book. “Mmmm?”

“We both know that autism isn’t a minor affliction, Jerry, and it’s never been cured. You clearly had demonstrable neurological damage. Nothing fled might have told you or showed you could have fixed that. Yet, you appear to be perfectly normal. What happened when you went off with her?”

“You’re right, Dr. B. It wasn’t anything she said that suddenly cured my affliction. It was what she did.”

“Really? What did she do?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. She took me to a laboratory somewhere. It was the middle of the night, so no one else was around. There was a laser gun. In fact, there were several. She had me lie down on a table. No, it wasn’t a table, it was a lab bench—she had to clear off some equipment first. That’s about all I can tell you. She zapped me in several different places with the lasers, and when she was finished, I suddenly understood things I never had before.”

“You mean like math and so on?”

“That was the easy part. No, it had to do with people. Before this, I could never figure out the interactions people had with each other. Those needs were utterly meaningless to me. In fact, I didn’t care. People were no more important than trees, and somehow repulsive as well. But all of a sudden I was able to figure it out. I am people, if you see what I mean. Interacting with other people is like interacting with myself. For good or bad, I’m one of us. I never understood that before.”

“Which do you think it is—good or bad?”

“I think it’s both. My head is flooded with new ideas, and I want to find out what I’ve missed all these years. I want to talk to people, see how they operate. See how I operate. I don’t have to go somewhere inside myself to have a sense of meaning anymore. But there’s a tradeoff, of course.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t remember how to do the matchstick sculptures.”

I couldn’t help but smile, which segued into a happy chuckle. “That’s all right, Jer. We’d rather have you than another sculpture, even if it’s a masterpiece. Welcome to the real world!”

“Thank you. I think.”

“It has its good points. Uh—fled didn’t say anything about what, exactly, she did with the laser beams, did she?”

“I didn’t ask her.”

“Tell me one more thing.”

“If I can.”

“What was it like—traveling at the speed of light?”

“I didn’t feel a thing. It’s like nothing happened at all, except there’s a little flash of light and then you’re somewhere else. There’s no sensation of movement whatever.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Depends on where we’re going.”

* * *

Before I could find fled again, I was paged by Will. I phoned him from the lounge. Besides being curious about how the session with Tewks and Filbert had gone, he reported a message he had taken from his brother-in-law Steve, who requested a return call from me. I told Will I’d fill him in later on the recent episode with fled, though I did give him a preview: “She has a heart, after all.”

Then I called my astronomer son-in-law. “Hi, Steve. Returning your call. How are Abby and the boys?”

Steve was in no mood for chitchat. “Damn it all to hell, Gene, when can Ah talk to fled?”

“Oh, God, Steve. So much has been going on here that I forgot to ask her about it.”

“Well, can you do it today?”

“I’ll try. What’s the rush, anyway?”

“We don’t know when she’s leaving, right? Ah don’t want to miss my only chance to talk to her.”

“Well, she won’t be leaving for…” I was amazed when I realized he was right: fled had already been on Earth for more than two weeks, and the first window would come open in a matter of days. “I’ll ask her today. Matter of fact, I was looking for her when you called.”

“Abby and Star want to talk to her, too. And Rain called from Princeton. He’s willing to cut classes for a day if he can be included.”

“Why don’t we just have a picnic and make it a family affair?”

“Great idea! Thanks, Dad-in-law—Ah appreciate it.”

“No, I was jok—”

But he had already hung up.

* * *

Fled was still enjoying the benefits of pre-motherhood. Everyone wanted to bring her a glass of water, a cucumber, a chair. For her part, fled ate it up. Whether it was all an act remained to be seen, but for the time being she seemed to become less belligerent and more fragile. The patients quickly picked up on this. They do live together, after all, and even subtle changes can be quite noticeable. A mental institution is much like a big family and, despite the intense focus on themselves, the inmates sincerely care about one another.

In a sense, I suppose, it wasn’t fled herself whom the patients were so solicitous of, but the unborn child, regardless of its nature. Of course it’s the same after they’re born: who doesn’t google at an infant in a stroller? Studies have shown that a person is captivated not only by the innocence of the little creature, but by the remembrance of one’s own purity, now irretrievably lost. Perhaps this little fella will not be so unfortunate as I was, one hopes. Fled, like all mothers-to-be, basked in the sunshine of this yearning.

I watched her for a while from the other side of the lawn. Darryl was sitting near me gazing at his pocket-size photographs of Meg Ryan. When a sudden burst of laughter came from the back forty, he looked up to see what the uproar was about. I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of fled.

“I didn’t like her at first. She was so strange. I thought maybe she was going to take us somewhere and stick things into us—you know, do medical experiments like the aliens in the UFOs. Make guinea pigs out of us. Then Howard told us she wasn’t so bad, that we should give her a chance. Didn’t help much, though. She was so loud and obnoxious that nobody wanted to. But the more she hung out, the more she seemed to belong here, you know? I guess you can get used to anyone if you’re around them long enough. Except for the fact that she’s so—well, ape-like—Howard was right. She’s okay. Not that much different from the rest of us. I don’t mean she’s somebody I’d want to live with on a permanent basis. But she’s very smart. She seems to see things the rest of us miss. And she’s really not that bad looking, either, when you think about it. I mean, she’s got hair all over her body, of course, but her eyes are big and brown, and her voice is nice when she speaks softly, don’t you think? And now that she’s pregnant…I kind of like her now.” He sighed and glanced again at the photos. “Of course, she’s not Meg.”

“No, Darryl. There’s only one Meg. And there’s only one fled, too, and everyone else, for that matter. Thank you for sharing your feelings about her.” Which probably went for most of the other patients as well. I excused myself and crossed the lawn to speak with “Mama” fled.

“Dr. b!” she called out when she saw me coming toward her. “I’ve missed you!”

I had only left her an hour before, so I assumed she was joking. “Let’s talk.”

“What—again? Don’t you ever get tired of the gum-flapping?”

“I’m beginning to. Especially since I never get any answers.” Several of the patients were standing around, waiting, listening. “Let’s go somewhere else, shall we?”

“She’s not really pregnant, you know.”

“Thanks, Rick. That helps a lot.”

Since we were already on the back forty, we went into the nearby Villers wing, which I hadn’t visited for some time. I asked fled whether she had ever been in it before. “Sure,” she said. “Had sex with a guy right on that sofa over there.”

Maybe she was lying about all the sex, too. Sometimes very shy people do that in order to cover up their lack of experience. Of course fled had shown no evidence whatever for shyness. “Really? Who?”

“I told you before—”

“Yeah, I remember. You don’t screw and tell.” I directed her to the solarium, which has a nice view of the rear lawn. In a corner stood Jerry’s sculpture of the Taj Mahal. “Let’s sit here.”

“Sure, boss.” She plopped down in one of the plastic chairs.

“All right. This time I want some answers.”

“Then I want some questions.”

“Okay, here’s the first one: what did you do to Jerry?”

“Oh, not much, really. He just had some loose wires that needed to be connected.”

“Which wires?”

“Sorry, doc. If I told you that, you’d be drilling into all the heads in the hospital. Worse, your government would be zapping all their secret prisoners.”

“Secret?”

“Wake up and smell the feces, gino.”

“I think I’m getting a whiff of it already. You’re a phony, aren’t you? You don’t know a damn thing about neurology.”

“Really, gene? Why don’t you have a little chat with jerry?”

“And you’re not really pregnant, are you? This is all a ruse to get the patients to listen to you, am I right? What are you planning to do—talk all of them into going to K-PAX with you?”

“Don’t have to. Most of them have been waiting years for me to pick them up.”

“But why do you want a bunch of crazy people on K-PAX?”

“They’re not ‘crazy.’ They’re damaged.”

“And what about Naraba? Are you faking that, too?”

“What would it take to make a believer out of you, gino? You want to go for that ride in the sky now? Or would even that not convince you? I fixed Jerry’s circuits, I’m pregnant, and naraba wants to stay away from human beings of all races, creeds, and countries of origin. If you can’t believe any of that, we might as well discontinue our little talks, don’t you think?”

“You’re right. On one level I believe everything you’ve told me. But there’s never any proof. You have to admit it’s a lot for a person to swallow.”

“Yes, for a small-throated sapien I suppose it is. But every word is true, regardless of whether you can digest them or not. Next question.”

“If I told you that Naraba and the chimpanzee from Rwanda or Cameroon are alter egos, and that they live in your head and nowhere else, would you be able to swallow it?”

“No.”

“Why should I believe you when you don’t believe me?”

“Because, for humans, beliefs are mental concoctions that help you cope with a cruel and stupid WORLD. They have nothing to do with the truth. Prot already pointed that out to you, remember?”

“All right, let’s change the topic. Is Naraba going with you to K-PAX?”

“If she wants to. That leaves 99,999 seats. You want one of them?”

“Not just yet. Now tell me the truth: how many of those 99,999 have you lined up already?”

“Most of them. But don’t worry—all the rest will be ready when the time comes.”

“And that time is fast approaching, right?”

“Still another week to the first window, gino. I won’t know until the day before.”

“I’d appreciate a little more notice than that.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say I don’t like to be left in the dark.”

“You’re already in the dark, my friend. I’ve concluded you must prefer it that way.”

“Thanks again.”

“No prob.”

“Now about your pregnancy: would you be willing to undergo a test to confirm that?”

“Sure. I’ll pee on your paper if you like. But it might not work. Our hormones aren’t exactly the same as yours, you know.” She was right; the lab results had come back and, though her DNA pattern and blood profile were similar to ours, they were not exactly the same. And they were different, as well, from those of her friends, the chimpanzees.

“But your blood and urine tests already gave us the baseline values,” I countered. “It’s the changes we would look for. Can’t you give us a just little more?”

“Oh, all right. But you’re a bloodthirsty lot—do you know that? And urinethirsty, too.”

“And can you make a list of everyone you’ve had—ah—sex with since you’ve been on our planet?”

“I already told you—”

“All right, no names, just how many and what species.”

“Sorry, doc, I really haven’t kept any records.”

“Yes, but you remember them all, right? So how many have there been in total? Approximately.”

“Fifty-seven. So far….”

“And out of that fifty-seven, how many were human?”

“Four.”

“Who were they?”

“You don’t know them. Except for the patients, of course.”

“How many patients?”

“Two.”

“Who besides Howard?”

“You’re wasting your precious time.”

“Okay, one final question before I forget again: would you like to come to my home—or my son-in-law Steve’s—for a picnic?”

“No, thanks.”

“Why not?”

“Are you familiar with the word ‘boooooooooring’?”

“Oh. Well, would you be willing to talk briefly with Steve and his family anyway? Without the picnic? You could consider it part of your study of life on Earth—typical Homo sapiens and all that.”

“From what I’ve heard, they’re not so typical.”

“All right, atypical Homo sapiens.”

“What would we talk about?”

“I think Steve wants to ask you about the universe. I don’t know what the rest of them want to know.”

“I told you: that stuff doesn’t interest me.”

“You mean you don’t know anything about the subject?”

She stared at me for a moment before wagging her head and sighing loudly. “Oh, all right—I’ll try to work them into my busy schedule….”

“And finally, the TV people are coming Wednesday morning. That’s the day after tomorrow, if you haven’t been keeping track. Will you be here then?”

“Maybe. If there are plenty of veggies around.

“I’ll have tubs of them everywhere.”

“Very kind of you.”

“No prob.”

* * *

I was exhausted by the time I got home late that afternoon. Not only had it been a very stressful day, but I had gotten up early, only to be thwarted by highway construction, and there were further delays on the way back. I hoped tomorrow would be different.

So it was with considerable chagrin that I was intercepted by an unmarked car with a flashing light that pulled me over next to an open field about half a mile from the house. I might have been going a little over the speed limit, but not enough to warrant a ticket. I wondered whether my license plate or inspection tag had expired.

One police officer came to the driver’s side of the car, the other to the passenger side. I opened the window. He showed his badge. “Dammit, Wang, couldn’t you wait until I got home?”

“Just doing you a favor, sir. We don’t want your neighbors to get suspicious, now do we?”

“Suspicious of what? What do you want this time?”

“A certain individual read our neurologist’s report.”

Dartmouth abruptly pulled his weapon from a concealed holster and took a shot at a sparrow sitting in a tree next to the field. He missed both the tree and the bird, which shat on the hood of my car as it took off.

A bit unnerved, I replied, “What individual?”

“Let’s just say you’d recognize the name. He’d like her to come down to Washington to answer some questions. Would you ask your friend about that?”

“What kind of questions?”

“He wants to see for himself that she can read his mind.”

“I don’t think she’d be interested.”

“We’ll make it worth her while.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“We’ll put her up in the best hotel we have. Swimming pool, tennis, championship golf course. What more could she want?”

“Right. I’ll pass that on to her. Anything else? I’m tired. I’d like to get home now.”

The steely eyes locked onto mine. “We’ve heard that there are three windows for her departure. Can you tell us which one she’s using?”

“No, I can’t. I don’t think she knows yet herself.”

They whirled simultaneously and jogged back to the unmarked car, throwing gravel all over mine as they wiggled and sped away in a cloud of dust. I imagined I heard the strains of “The Love for Three Oranges” and a voice shouting, “Hi-yo, Silver!”