Those Who Watch

Ten

Vorneen seemed to be sleeping now, Kathryn thought. She couldn’t be sure of it, though. In the four days she had sheltered him in her house, the one certain thing she had learned about him was that she couldn’t be sure of anything about him.

She stood beside the bed, watching him. Eyes closed. No motion of the eyeballs beneath the lids. Slow, deep, regular breathing. All the symptoms of sleep. But sometimes it seemed that he only pretended to sleep, because she expected it of him. At other times he went to sleep in a fantastic way, evidently turning himself off as though he were a machine, click! Either way, the effect was far from human.

Kathryn was convinced now that she was playing hostess to a being from another world.

It was such a bizarre concept that it was taking a long time to sink in. She had played with the thought from the first night, when it had occurred to her that the meteor had been a flying saucer and that this man might have dropped from it. The evidence had been overwhelming, right from the start. And it had grown, day by day, as she watched him closely.

The orange tinge to his blood. The strange suit in her closet. The strange tools that had fallen from it, like the little flashlight-thing that was a disintegrator ray. The smoothness and coolness of his skin. The nonsense words he spoke while he was delirious. Delirium without fever. The peculiar fractures of his leg that had been so easy to set. The curious lightness of his body, which weighed forty or fifty pounds less than a man of his size ought to weigh.

How could she pretend that all these things were mere oddities?

In four days, he had not used the bedpan at all. He had quietly put it under the bed, empty, and it was still there. She checked it from time to time while he seemed to be asleep. How could a man go four days without moving his bowels or passing urine? He was eating regularly, he was drinking plenty of water, yet he neither excreted nor perspired. Kathryn could overlook a lot of odd things about Vorneen, but not that. Where did the waste products go? What kind of metabolism did he have? She was not by nature a woman who had speculated much about other worlds, other forms of life; such notions had simply never been part of her intellectual furniture. But it was hard to avoid the conclusion now that Vorneen came from far away.

Even the name — Vorneen. What kind of name was that? He had volunteered it, half shyly, on the second day, and she had frowned and made him spell it, and he had stumbled a little over the spelling as if he wasn’t accustomed to thinking of it in terms of an alphabet, but only in terms of sound. Vorneen. Was that his first name, or his last name, or his only name? She did not know. She was afraid to ask too many questions. He would tell her what he chose to tell her, all in his own good time, and she would have to be grateful for that. She studied him as he slept.

He seemed so peaceful. He had not left the bed since she had lowered him into it, the first night. Kathryn slept on the sofa, poorly, although Vorneen had suggested rather bluntly that she share the bed with him. “It’s big enough for two, isn’t it?” he asked. Yes, it was. She wondered whether he was being deliberately innocent about the significance of a man and a woman sharing the same bed, or whether, because he was not a man, it had never occurred to him that there might be any significance to it at all. Possibly he did not think in terms of sex.

She had turned away, reddening like a silly virgin, when he had suggested she share the bed with him. Her own reaction puzzled her. She had been widowed for a year, now, and she owed nothing to Ted’s memory. She could sleep wherever she chose, exactly as she had done when she was nineteen and single. Yet she was mysteriously prudish, suddenly. During her months of mourning it had been unthinkable to get involved with a man; she had withdrawn from the world almost completely, making a little warm nest here for herself and Jill in this house, and rarely going beyond the local shopping center, but she had been telling herself since the summer that it was time to begin emerging from that and finding a new father for Jill. Well, this man who had dropped from the skies was hardly a candidate for that responsibility, but even so there was no reason why she couldn’t allow herself to get close to him, even to make love with him if his inclinations inclined that way and his broken leg permitted any such strenuous activities. The leg seemed to be healing with fantastic swiftness, anyway; she had it taped, and the swelling had gone down, and he no longer indicated feeling any pain in it.

Why, then, did she shy back from the bed with such maidenly reserve?

Kathryn thought she understood. It was not because she was afraid of sleeping with Vorneen. It was because she was afraid of the intensity of her own desires. Something about this slim, pale, improbably handsome man called out physically to her. It had been that way from the first moment Kathryn did not believe in love at first sight, but desire at first sight was a different story, and she was in the grip of it. She drew back, terrified by the intensity of what she felt for Vorneen. If she allowed the barrier between herself and him to slip, even a little, anything might happen.

Anything.

She had to know more about him first.

She adjusted his coverlet and picked up the notepad that lay on the night table. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, she wrote. Going into Albuquerque to shop. Don’t fret. K. Pinning the note to the unused pillow beside him on the double bed, she tiptoed from the room and went into her daughter’s playroom. The little girl was making something sinister and ropy out of the flexiputty Kathryn had bought her, and the thing was writhing like an octopus. Or like a Martian, if there were any Martians. Kathryn was seeing unearthly beings all over the place.

“Look, Mommy, it’s a snake!” Jill cried.

“Snakes don’t have legs, honey,” Kathryn said. “But it’s beautiful, anyway. Here, let me put your coat on.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’ve got to drive into town. You’ll go over to play at Mrs Webster’s for a little while, all right?”

Uncomplainingly, Jill let Kathryn pull her coat on. She had a three-year-old’s easy adaptability to changes in surroundings and circumstances. She still remembered her dead father, but only vaguely, remembering more the fact that she had had someone called “Daddy’ than anything specific about him; if Ted were to walk through the door now, Jill probably would not recognize him. The strayed kitten was fading into memory the same way, in a far shorter time. As for the abrupt and inexplicable arrival of Vorneen in the household, Jill did not seem to worry about it at all. She had accepted it as a phenomenon of the universe, like the setting of the sun or the coming of the postman. Shrewdly Kathryn had not warned Jill about mentioning Vorneen to other people, for then the girl surely would. To Jill, Vorneen was a visitor, someone staying with the family, and after the second day she lost all apparent interest in the man in the bed.

Kathryn scooped Jill up and took her across the street to a neighbor with whom she maintained a vague, distant friendship. The neighbor had four children under ten, and an extra one never seemed to matter to her. “Can you watch Jill until about five?” Kathryn asked. “I’ve got to go to town.” It was as simple as that. Jill waved a solemn goodbye to her.

Five minutes later, Kathryn was on the highway, buzzing toward Albuquerque at eighty miles an hour. The smooth, silent battery-powered engine of her car throbbed with power. She shot past Bernalillo on the freeway and glided into suburban Albuquerque. At this hour, the traffic was light. The winter sky was speckled with gray clouds, and the lofty skyline ahead of her seemed blurred. It might snow today, perhaps. But there were people in town who could tell her about flying saucers, and this was a good day for talking to them.

When she’d parked the car in the big city lot underneath Rio Grande Boulevard, Kathryn walked eastward toward the Old Town. The telephone book gave the Contact Cult office an address on Romero Street. Of course, it didn’t call itself a Contact Cult; that was the newspaper name, and Kathryn understood that the cultists resented being thought of as cultists. The official name of the group was the Society for the Brotherhood of Worlds. Kathryn had found it listed in the telephone book under “Religious Organizations’.

A burnished bronze plaque mounted on the front of a ramshackle old building identified the local office — church of the Society for the Brotherhood of Worlds. Kathryn held back at the entrance. Her cheeks suddenly flamed as she recalled how acidly Ted had spoken of this organization, with its trappings of mystic pomp, its seances at Stonehenge and Mesa Verde, its pious mingling of ancient ritual and modern scientific gadgetry. Ted had said something to the effect that half the members of the. Contact Cult were con men and the other half were willing marks, and that Frederic Storm, the leader, was the biggest con man of all. Kathryn shook off her hesitation. Ted’s opinions didn’t matter now. She hadn’t come here to join the cult, merely to try to find information.

She went in.

The lavishly appointed interior belied the building’s shabby facade. Kathryn found herself in a small, high-vaulted anteroom that was empty save for a couple of elegant chairs and a gleaming bronze replica of the statue that was the Contact Cult’s trademark, a naked woman, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched, reaching in welcome toward the stars. Kathryn had always thought that that emblem was marvelously silly, but now, to her discomfort, she was not so sure. On three sides of the room sumptuous mahogany doors led to inner offices.

She was being scanned, she knew. A moment passed, and one of the doors opened. A woman of about forty came out, flashing a quick professional smile. Her hair was pulled severely back from her forehead; her clothing was fashionably austere; pinned to her collar she wore the little stylized emblem of a flying saucer that served as the Contact Cult’s identifying badge.

“Good afternoon. Can I can help you?”

“Ah — yes,” Kathryn said uncertainly. “I’d like — some information—”

“Would you come this way?”

She found herself being brusquely conveyed into an office that would have delighted a bank president. The severe, no-nonsense woman seated herself behind an angular desk. Kathryn saw the brooding, consciously mystic features of Frederic Storm staring down from the wall in a tridim photo at least six feet high. Der Fuhrer, she thought, He’d!

“You’re a little early for our evening service of blessing and universal unity,” the woman said. “We’ll be having Frederic Storm on the screen at eight tonight, and it should be an inspiring event. But in the meantime we can go through the preliminary orientation. Have you belonged to any chapter of the Society prior to this?”

“No,’Kathryn said.’I-”

“There’s just this simple routine, then.” The woman pushed a recording cube toward her. “If you’ll answer a few questions for us, we can register you right away, and begin to draw you into the harmony of our group. I take it you’re aware of our general purposes and beliefs?” The woman nodded meaningfully toward the glowering image of Frederic Storm on the wall. “Perhaps you’ve read several of Frederic Storm’s books about his contacts with our brothers from space? He’s a miraculous writer, wouldn’t you say? I don’t understand how any rational person can read his books and fail to see that—”

Desperately, Kathryn cut in. “I’m sorry, I haven’t read any of his books. I didn’t come here for the service, either. Or to join, really. I just wanted some information.”

The look of professional warmth vanished. “Are you from the media?” the woman asked crossly.

“You mean a reporter? Oh, no. I’m just a—” Kathryn paused and realized the right approach to take. “Just an ordinary housewife. I’m troubled about this space thing, the saucers and all, and I don’t really know where to begin asking questions, except that I want to know more about it, whether there are beings out in space, you know, and what they want with us, and everything. I’ve been meaning to stop by for a long time. And when I saw the fireball a few nights ago, well, that clinched it. 1 came here first chance I got. But I’m really ignorant. You’ll have to start from the beginning with me.”

The Contact Cult woman relaxed, no longer on guard against a poking newshound. She said, “Perhaps you should start with our literature. This is the introductory kit.” She took a thick manila envelope from her desk and slid it toward Kathryn. “You’ll find all the basic brochures in there. Then—” she added a stout paperback book to the pile “—this is the most recent edition of Frederic Storm’s Our Friends, the Galaxy. It’s quite inspiring.”

“I’ll look everything over.”

“There’s a charge of two dollars for the material.”

Kathryn was startled at that. Proselyters didn’t usually dive for the profits so early in the conversion process. She pursed her lips and handed over the two bills, all the same.

“There’s also a fifteen-minute information film. We show it in our auditorium on the second floor every half hour. The next show takes place in about five minutes.” A quick grin. “There’s no admission fee.”

“I’ll watch it,” Kathryn promised.

“Fine. Afterwards, if you feel you’d like to participate more deeply in the experience Frederic Storm offers the world, come back here and we’ll talk, and I’ll register you on a preliminary basis. That’ll entitle you to attend tonight’s service.”

“Fine,” Kathryn said. “And now could I ask you just one thing — something about saucers, not exactly about the Society here?”

“Of course.”

“The fireball on Monday night. That wasn’t really a meteor, was it? Don’t you think it was a flying saucer, maybe an exploding one?”

“Frederic Storm believes that it was indeed a vehicle of the galactic people,” said the woman primly. She was like some sort of robot, mouthing the words of the leader, always taking care to call him by his full name. “He released a brief statement about it yesterday. He plans a fuller exposition of his thinking at a service early next week.”

“And he says it was a saucer? What about its crew?”

“He has not issued any statement about the crew.”

“Suppose,” Kathryn said uneasily, “suppose the crew bailed out. Suppose they landed alive. Is that possible? That they could land, and look like human beings, and maybe be discovered by us and come into our houses? Has anything like that ever happened, could you say?”

She was afraid she was being too transparent. Surely this woman would pounce on her and demand to be taken instantly to the injured galactic visitor in her home. But no, there was no appearance of personal involvement, only the shifting of the gears and the declaiming of the appropriate segment of the party line.

“Certainly the galactics have landed on Earth many times, and have come among us in human form. For they are human, merely more advanced, more closely approaching the godlike that is the ultimate in our destiny. Frederic Storm would say that it is quite probable that the beings aboard the ship made a safe landing. But we have nothing to fear from them. You must understand that: they are benevolent. Come, now. You’ll miss our film. When you return to my office, you’ll be much more deeply aware of the meaning of this unique and wonderful moment in human and transhuman history.”

Kathryn was ushered smoothly out of the office. She found herself alone in the sterile anteroom. A sign pointed to the upstairs auditorium, and she followed it. A ramp took her into a large abstract-looking room. The rear wall was a viewing screen; there were about two dozen rows of seats, and the customary emblems, portraits of Frederic Storm, star maps, and other Contact Cult paraphernalia along the walls. Four other people, all of them elderly women, were in the room. Kathryn took a seat in the back row, and almost at once the lights dimmed and the screen came to life.

A narrator’s voice said in portentous tones, “Out of the immeasurable void of the cosmos, across the inconceivably vast depths of intergalactic space, toward our humble, struggling planet, come friendly visitors.”

On screen: the stars. The Milky Way. Camera closing in on a group of stars. Suddenly a view of our solar system, the planets strung like beads across the sky. Saturn, Mars, Venus. Earth with the continents unnaturally prominent, an obviously phony shot, nothing at all like a real view from space. And there came a flying saucer soaring out, infinitely small, growing and growing as it neared Earth. Kathryn had to repress the temptation to burst out laughing. The saucer was a comical thing, all portholes and periscopes and flashing lights. So far the film looked like nothing more than a standard sci-fi thriller, handled with the usual degree of subtlety.

“Beings of godlike grace — transhuman in their abilities — benevolent, all-seeing, all-wise — grieving for our trouble-ridden civilization—”

Now the screen showed the interior of the flying saucer. Gadgetry everywhere, computers and clicking things and gauges. There were the saucer people: superb specimens of transhuman life, muscular, magnificent, with expressions of ineffable wisdom. Now the ship was landing on Earth, popping down as easily as a feather. The action became violent: farmers firing shotguns at the visitors, grim-faced men in uniforms attacking them, hysterical women cowering behind trees. And the galactic visitors remaining calm throughout, warding off bullets and bombs, smiling sadly, beckoning to the frightened Earthmen to take heart.

“In this time of crisis and doubt, Frederic Storm came forward to offer himself as a bridge between humankind and transhumankind—”

The great man fearlessly advancing toward the parked saucer. Smiling. Holding out his hands in salute. Drawing geometrical figures in the soil. Resonantly offering welcome. There was Storm aboard the saucer, now. The galactics appeared to be at least eight feet tall. They were clasping his hand solemnly.

“To a hostile, fear-engulfed mankind, Frederic Storm brought the message of peace. At first he met only the jeers and mockery that other great leaders of mankind had known—”

A crowd smashing the windshield of Storm’s car. Setting it afire. The police saving the prophet just in time. Angry fists shaking. Faces contorted with hatred.

“—but there were those who recognized the truth of this persecuted man’s mission—”

A shot of women queueing up in a supermarket to buy copies of one of Storm’s books. Disciples. Storm smiling, addressing a crowd in the Los Angeles Coliseum. A sense of quickening tempo, of a latter-day religious movement getting under way.

Kathryn fidgeted in her seat.

With a kind of empty-headed adroitness the film was shifting madly now, offering a shot of Storm among the saucer people again, Storm leading his followers in prayer and meditation, Storm speaking directly out of the screen urging all mankind to put aside mistrust and suspicion and welcome the benevolent space people with all their hearts. Shots of other saucer-sighters came across the screen: tense women declaring they had seen the galactics, “Yes I surely did,” and lean, trembling men announcing they had ridden in the ships of the saucer folk, “actually and literally’. And a final sequence of shots showing an authentic service of the Society for the Brotherhood of Worlds. It was nothing else but a revival session, full of shouted benedictions and affirmations, of waving arms and glistening foreheads and staring eyes, of rapturous statements of contact with the galactics. The film ended with a rhapsody of organ chords that shook the building. When the lights came on, the other four women of the audience sat motionless, stunned, as if they had experienced a shattering epiphany.

Kathryn left quickly, slipping through the anteroom downstairs before anyone could see her. It had been a waste of time to come here, she realized now. Everything she had heard about the Contact Cult was true: it was nothing but a moneymaking dodge, an attempt to exploit the easily deluded. Kathryn felt tempted to burst into that elegant office and shout, ‘Frederic Storm’s never seen a galactic in his life! If you want to see one, come home with me!’ Were the galactics eight feet tall and supernally benevolent of mien? No; at least one of them wasn’t. Kathryn saw no connection between the guest in her home and the glossy beings of the film. Frederic Storm was a fraud, and his followers were cranks, just as most intelligent people had always insisted. To Kathryn, it seemed bitterly amusing that Vorneen had chosen to drop into a skeptic’s garden. What if he had fallen beside the home of a true believer?

She laughed over that. Surely it would demolish Storm overnight if one of his followers showed up at the evening service with an authentic galactic in tow! It would be like bringing Jesus along to High Mass … an embarrassment for the authorities.

Too bad, though, that the trip had been useless. In what she now saw had been hopeless naivete, she had gone to Albuquerque expecting to find genuine comfort and counsel at the Contact Cult — someone who would be able to guide her and interpret for her the presence in her home of this mysterious being. Instead she had received a machine-turned promotional razzle-dazzle and had been milked of a couple of dollars. So much for the Society for the Brotherhood of Worlds, she thought, as she sped homeward along a freeway just beginning to thicken with early rush-hour traffic. The Contact Cult had nothing to offer. She was strictly on her own in her dealings with Vorneen.

Collecting Jill from the neighbor, Kathryn entered the house and began thinking about dinner. She went into Vorneen’s room. He was awake.

“Have a good trip?” he asked.

“Not really. I didn’t accomplish anything.”

“What’s that in your hand?”

She realized she was holding the brochures and booklets she had bought at the Contact Club. Her cheeks flared. “Nothing much. Just some junk.”

“I could use something to read.”

Kathryn sought for a way out, found none, and said, “All right. For what it’s worth, here.” She tossed the material onto the bed. Vorneen fanned the booklets out.

“What is all this?” he asked.

She said evenly, “It’s literature about flying saucers. I got it at the Contact Cult in Albuquerque. You know what a Contact Cult is?”

“The new religion. Based on supposed meetings between Earthmen and beings from space.”

“That’s right,” Kathryn said.

“Why should you be interested in such things?” he asked, and there was no mistaking the slyness in his voice.

Her eyes met his. “I’m interested in many things. But I wasted my time with them. They’re talking through their hats down there. They’ve invented their whole religion. They wouldn’t know a real galactic being if it walked up and saluted them.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “Yes!”