Those Who Watch

Five

About midnight Kathryn thought she heard the whimpering of Jill’s kitten once again. She rolled over, telling herself it was just a dream, but the sound came again, insistently, and this time Kathryn sat up and listened. Yes, there was something out there. She could hear the soft, high-pitched mewling noise. She was certain the kitten was back. Thank God, thank God, thank God! How happy Jill would be!

She sprang from the bed. Her robe lay somewhere on the floor by the foot of the bed; she snatched it up and wriggled into it, belting it tightly. Unsealing the door, neutralizing the house alarm, she stepped outside. A chilly breeze off the desert struck her broadside, cutting through her thin robe and the flimsy nightgown beneath, and she shivered at the icy hand on her flesh. Where was the kitten, now?

She did not see it anywhere. But she still heard the soft high-pitched sound.

And now it seemed to her that what she heard was less of a meow, more of a moan.

Kathryn fought back her impulse to rush inside the house and seal it again. Someone might be hurt out here. An auto accident, maybe. She hadn’t heard the sound of a crash, but perhaps she had slept through it. Warily she glanced around, looking at the neighboring house to her left, looking at the open desert to her right. She took a few hesitant steps.

She saw the man, sprawled some twenty feet from her front door on a bare patch of sandy soil.

He lay on his side, facing her, wearing some kind of high-altitude suit. The faceplate had split, evidently upon impact, and was dangling open. Kathryn saw smears of blood on his lips and cheeks. His eyes were shut. He was moaning steadily, but he was not moving. By his side lay three or four gleaming metal things, tools of some sort, that might have fallen out of pockets in his suit.

She thought about that fireball she had seen a few hours before. Only a meteor? Or had it really been an exploding ship, and was this one of the survivors of the disaster?

Kathryn rushed toward him. He stirred as she approached, but his eyes remained closed. She crouched by him, ignoring the roughness of the sand against her knees.

It was difficult to tell how badly hurt he was. He seemed young — thirtyish — and in pain. And very handsome, Kathryn was surprised and shaken by the intensity of her response to the injured man’s good looks. She felt herself in the grip of an instant sexual pull, and that astonished her. In annoyance she clamped her thighs tight together and bent forward to peer at him more closely.

Gingerly she nudged the faceplate out of the way. His face was flecked with blood, but she had expected to find him perspiration-soaked as well, and he was not. The bloodstains seemed odd too, Kathryn thought. By the dim starlight it appeared to her that there was a distinct orange tinge to the blood. Imagination? Perhaps. She had seen blood before, in her nursing days, and she had never seen blood like this.

I ought to call the police, she told herself. Or get an ambulance, or something.

Yet she held back. She did not want to involve the outside authorities in this, just now, and she did not know why. Carefully she slipped her hand into the open helmet and touched the injured man’s cheek. Feverish. But no perspiration? Why was that? She turned one of his eyelids up, and a cool gray eye stared briefly at her. The eye closed when she removed her finger, and the man quivered and grunted. His moans were congealing into words now. Kathryn could not make sense of them. Was he speaking some foreign language, or was this just the delirium of extreme pain? She struggled to catch even a syllable, without success. One sound seemed to flow into another.

The wind howled around them. Kathryn looked up, half expecting to find the neighbors watching. But all was still. She was puzzled by her own attitude to this unexpected visitor. Something fiercely protective was welling up within her, something that told her, Take him into your house, nurse him back to health. But that was nonsense. He was a stranger, and she feared and disliked strangers. There were hospitals available. She had no business with this man who had dropped from the sky, this agent of some Communist nation. How could she even consider taking him inside for a moment?

She did not understand any of this. But she leaned close, studying the seamless fabric of the man’s suit, struggling to learn something of his origin. Idly she picked up the tools that lay beside him. One looked something like a flashlight, with a stud at one end. Casually Kathryn touched the stud, and gasped in shock as a golden beam flicked out and sliced across a limb of a nearby tree. The limb fell to the ground. Kathryn dropped the little metallic tube as though it had burned her. What was it? Some kind of hand-laser? A heat ray?

Where does this man come from?

She did not touch the other tools. She could not begin to guess their function, but suddenly they seemed incredibly strange and . . . otherworldly. She felt lightheaded. This encounter was becoming unreal.

She knew that she had to get him into the house, get that suit off him, and find out what help he needed. It did not seem to her that this man, injured as he was, posed any threat to her or to her sleeping child. Last year in Syria a man had fallen from the skies just as this one had. Her husband, Ted. Had he been alive when he landed? Did anyone help him? Or did they let him lie alone in the desert until all his life had trickled away? Kathryn wondered how she could bring him inside. You weren’t supposed to move an injured person at all, of course. But it wasn’t far. Could she lift him?

She slipped one arm around his shoulders and put the other behind his knees. She didn’t intend to pick him up, simply to see how he reacted to being moved. To her bewilderment, she found him improbably light. Although he was the size of a full-grown man, he seemed to weigh no more than seventy or eighty pounds. Without quite realizing what she was doing, Kathryn rose to her feet, holding him in her arms with effort but without intolerable strain, and moved toward her house. She nudged the door open and carried him within, and, gasping a little, hurried into the bedroom.

She set him delicately down on the only convenient place — her bed, the big double bed that she had shared for six years with a husband who now was only a fading memory. The injured man moaned again and spoke rapidly in his strange language, but he did not awaken. Nor did he show any ill effects from having been carried. Good. Good. Kathryn rushed from the room, her heart pounding, her body suddenly ablaze with bewildering sensations, her mind thick with confusion.

What now? Lock and seal the door again, first. Switch on the alarm. And then—

She checked ‹her daughter’s bedroom. Jill was still sound asleep. Kathryn adjusted the monitor so that it would vibrate her mattress and keep her from waking up for a while.

Into the bathroom now. She scooped things from the medicine cabinet, almost at random. Bandages, tape, scissors, quickheal, antiseptic spray, a bottle of paindamp, and seven or eight other things, stuffing them into the pockets of her robe. The man on her bed had not moved. She had to get that suit off him first. She searched for a zipper, a catch, a button, anything. She could find none. The fabric was smooth and unbroken. Kathryn pinched some of it between two fingers and tried to cut it, but it resisted the scissors as easily as if it had been a sheet of steel. She did not dare roll him over to search for the zipper that might be on the other side.

He stirred. “Glair?” he said clearly. “Glair?”

“Don’t try to move. You’ll be all right. Just lie still and let me help you.”

He subsided again. More anxiously now, Kathryn fumbled for a way to get the suit off him. But it was as snug as a second skin, and she despaired of the job until she noticed a tiny, almost imperceptible button at the throat. Pressing it did nothing, but when she twisted it gently to the left something beneath the surface of the suit appeared to yield, and then, quite rapidly, she found the suit opening of its own accord, splitting down a fissure line from head to foot. In moments it was open, and she could lift the upper half away to reveal the man within.

He was nearly naked, wearing only a rubbery yellow wrapping around his loins. His body was slim, very pale, hairless, and . . . beautiful. The word thrust itself unbidden into Kathryn’s consciousness. There was an almost feminine kind of beauty about him, a sleekness, a smoothness, a slenderness; his skin was virtually translucent. But even without removing the loincloth Kathryn knew he was undeniably male. Powerful muscles, flexing and coiling now in pain, lay beneath the ivory skin. His shoulders were wide, his hips narrow, his chest and belly flat and firm. He could have been a Greek statue come to life. Only the pain evident in his features, the streaks of blood on his chin, the distorted pose of his anguish-racked body, marred the Athenian serenity and symmetry of his form. How badly hurt was he, Kathryn wondered? She touched him gently, probing for the injuries. Hospital skills she had not used in many years flooded back from the vault of her memory. Her hands passed over his cool skin. She saw that his left leg was broken; it was only a simple fracture, though, and that troubled her. From the way the limb was bent and crumpled, there surely should be a jagged spear of bone thrusting through the skin, and yet the skin was whole. Could a bone snap that way, cleanly, while not penetrating the flesh? How could he have avoided a com-: pound fracture, with the leg askew like that?

She could not find any other fractures, though he was bruised in a dozen places. Doubtless there were internal injuries. That would explain the blood around his lips and chin. That blood, Kathryn saw plainly under the bright light of the bedroom, definitely had an orange tinge. She looked at it in disbelief, and at the twisted leg once again, and she examined the open suit on which he still lay, noticing the assortment of mysterious compartments and instruments along the suit’s inner surface. She did not want to leap immediately to the wild conclusion that this man came from some other world, and so she thrust that line of speculation aside and concentrated on examining him.

She used a damp cloth to wipe away the blood on his face. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. Hesitantly she put her hands to the broken leg, trying to guide it into place even though she knew she had no business setting a broken bone. To her amazement the limb yielded easily to pressure, as though it were nothing more than modeling clay, and with the slightest prod she succeeded in realigning it. The man on the bed grimaced; but now his leg was straight again, and Kathryn suspected that the two halves of the snapped bone were in line. He was breathing more easily, with his mouth open. Kathryn picked up the bottle of paindamp and allowed a few drops of the all-purpose anesthetic to slide between his lips. He swallowed.

He’d feel better now . . . assuming that a body like his responded to paindamp at all.

She realized that she had done about as much as she could do for him, just now. There were no external wounds that needed bandaging. He had stopped moaning, and appeared merely to be asleep. She looked worriedly at him. Sooner or later he would wake, and then what?

Kathryn brushed all those fears away. He would be more comfortable, she decided, without that old rubbery loincloth. He’d need to pass wastes, and he couldn’t very well do that with his middle encased in rubber. Nor did she see any kind of opening in the garment, which puzzled her all the more. He did pass wastes, didn’t he? She had to get it off him.

At the thought of it, that curious sexual throbbing surged through her again. Kathryn quirked her lips in anger. Before her marriage, as a nurse, she had handled male patients the way a nurse was supposed to handle them, as so much live meat, with no concern for their bodies. Yet now she utterly failed to recapture that dispassionate attitude. Had a year of chaste widowhood made her so eager to see a man’s body, she wondered? Or was it something else, a powerful attraction exerted only by this man in particular? Perhaps it was mere snoopiness, the desire to find out what was under there. If he did come from some other world—

Kathryn seized the scissors, placed them against his right thigh, slid them under the fabric, and tried to cut. She did not succeed. The undergarment was as tough as his spacesuit, and the blade bounded away from the resilient material.

She was sure she could roll the garment down, but she did not want to subject his injured leg to that much jouncing about. Perplexed, she searched for a hidden catch such as the outer garment had had, and as her hands slid up and down his hips she became so involved in what she was doing that she failed to notice he had returned to consciousness.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a pleasantly resonant voice.

Kathryn leaped back, panicky. “Oh — you’re awake!”

“More or less. Where am I?”

“In my house. Near Bernalillo. About twenty miles from Albuquerque. Does any of that mean anything to you?”

“A little.” He looked down at his leg. “Have I been unconscious long?”

“I found you about an hour ago. You were just outside my house. You… landed there.”

“Yes. I landed.” He smiled. His eyes were lively, probing, ironical. He was implausibly handsome with the artificial good looks of a movie star. Kathryn kept her distance. She was uncomfortably aware of the whiteness of his skin, of her own light nightgown and wrap, of the sleeping child in the next room. She began to wish she had not yielded to this wild impulse to bring him into her house. He said, “Where is the rest of your sexual group?”

“My sexual group?” — blankly.

He laughed. “Sorry. My stupidity. I mean, your mate. Your— husband.”

“He’s dead,” Kathryn murmured. “He was killed last year’ I live with my child.”

“I see.” He tried to get up, but clenched his teeth as soon as he moved his left leg. Kathryn went toward him and held out her hand.”

“No. Lie there. Your leg’s broken.”

“So it seems.” He forced a grin. “Are you a doctor?”

“I’ve had medical training. I was a nurse before I was married. Your leg will be all right, but you mustn’t put any weight on it for a while. In the morning I’ll phone a doctor and he’ll put it in a cast.”

The amiability left the stranger’s face. “Do you have to do that?”

“What?”

“Get a doctor. Can’t you take care of me?”

“Me? But I-you-”

“Is it forbidden morally? The formerly married woman accepting a strange man in her dwelling? I can pay you. There’s money in my suit. Just let me stay here until my leg is better. I’ll be no trouble for you, I promise that. I—” A spasm of sudden pain racked him. He knotted his hands together, interlocking the fingertips and pulling outward from the center.

“Drink some of this,” Kathryn said, holding out the paindamp.

“It won’t do any good. I can— deal with it—”

She watched, mystified, as he went through some silent inner process. Whatever he was doing, it seemed to work. The strain lines left his face; he relaxed again; the expression of detached irony returned.

“May I stay here?” he asked.

“Perhaps. For a while.” She did not dare to ask now where he had come from or who he was. “Does your leg hurt you very badly?”

“I’ll manage. I think the real injuries may be inside. I took a bad jolt when I— when I came down.” He seemed very calm about it, she thought. He went on, “You won’t have to do much for me. I need rest, food, a little help. I’ll burden you only for a few weeks. Why were you taking off my waistband?”

Color stippled her cheeks. “To make you more comfortable. And— and in case you had to go to the bathroom. But I couldn’t get it off. It wouldn’t open, and I wasn’t able to cut it. And then you woke up.”

His hand went to his left hip and did something Kathryn could not follow, and the yellow garment snapped open and fell away, all so swiftly that she put her hand to her lips in sudden surprise. Oddly, there was nothing strange about his nakedness. She did not know what she had expected to see some alien organ, perhaps, or more likely a smoothly sexless expanse of doll-like skin — but he was quite conventionally constructed. Kathryn looked, and looked away.

“You have a strong nudity taboo?” he asked.

“Not really. It’s just that — oh, all of this is so peculiar! I ought to be afraid of you, but I’m not, and I should be calling the police, but I won’t, and—” She checked herself. “I’ll give you a bedpan. Do you want me to cook something for you to eat? Some soup, some toast, maybe? And here, let me try to get that suit out from under you. You’ll be able to sleep better without it there.”

He showed a flicker of pain as she eased the suit off the bed, but he said nothing. She drew the waistband out the same way. Lying slim and nude on her bed, he smiled gratefully up at her. Kathryn covered him. He was keeping very calm, but surely he was in greater pain that he was letting her know about.

He said, “Will you put the suit in a safe place? A place where no one is likely to discover it?”

“Is the back of my closet all right?”

“For now,” he said. “I would not want anyone but you to come upon it.”

She hid the suit behind her summer clothes. His eyes did not leave her. Pulling the coverlet up over him, she said, “Now, how about something to eat?”

“In the morning, I think.” His hand touched hers briefly. “What’s your name?”

“Kathryn. Kathryn Mason.”

He did not offer his own name, and she could not bring herself to ask for it.

“Can I trust you, Kathryn?”

“In what way?”

“To keep my presence here a secret.”

She chuckled thinly. “I’m not looking for a neighborhood scandal. No one’s going to find out you’re here.”

“Excellent.”

“I’ll get you the bedpan now.”

She felt a certain relief at escaping from him. He frightened her, and her fear was growing, rather than lessening, as the moment passed. His very calmness was the most terrifying thing of all. He seemed unreal, synthetic; everything about him struck a false note, from his too-pretty face to his too-smooth voice with its too-bland accentless tones. And to recover from delirious unconsciousness to rationality within fifteen minutes, that way, was even weirder. It was as if he had thrown a switch inside himself that shunted the pain impulses elsewhere.

Kathryn trembled. She drew the bedpan from the kitchen closet and rinsed it out.

There was a strange man in her house, which was upsetting.

There was a stranger in her house who might not be a man, and that was far more upsetting.

She returned to him, and he smiled as she slipped the bedpan under the sheets. Trying to regain her old nursely objectivity, Kathryn said, “Is there anything else I can do for you now?”

“You could give me some information.”

“Of course.”

“On the radio, the television, tonight. Was there any unusual news in this neighborhood?”

“The meteor,” she said. “I saw it. The big ball of fire in the sky.”

“It was a meteor, then?”

“That’s what they said on television.”

He digested that for a moment. She waited, hoping for some revelation, waiting for the blunt admission of his origin. But he was giving nothing away. He regarded her in silence.

“Would you like me to turn out the light?” she asked.

He nodded.

She darkened the room. Only then did she realize she had left herself no place to sleep. He had the bed, and she could hardly climb in alongside him.

She curled up on the living-room couch. But she did not sleep at all, and when she returned to his room, several hours before dawn, she saw that his eyes were open too. Once again his face was fixed in the rigid lines of pain.

“Glair?” he asked.

“Kathryn. What can I do for you?”

“Just hold my hand in yours,” he whispered, and she took it, and they remained that way until morning.