Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 18

After a while they got dressed again and went down to the hotel restaurant for lunch. Then they bought some fruit and magazines, went back to the room and put their feet up. Stone read through Time, with muttered exclamations, then put it down and got another magazine from the writing desk: a cheap-looking thing with a monster on the cover.

When he had been staring at it awhile, she asked, "What are you reading that for?"

"There are clues in it. Listen to this." He turned back a few pages and read, " 'He watched the slow movement of the glowing point.' This is where the hero is flying from Europe to his secret base in the Artie. He has a navigational thing in the plane that shows where he is on a map of the world.''

"We have that in cars now."

"Okay, you see? How did he know that, in nineteen thirty-one, for Cripe's sake? But listen to how it goes on. 'The Central Federated States of Europe were behind him; the point was tracing a course over the vast reaches of the patchwork map that meant the many democracies of Russia.' "

He looked at her earnestly. "You don't call it the Central Federated States, but there is a European Federation, right, and there is a kind of patchwork of democracies where part of Russia used to be. He knew something."

"Coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidence." He turned pages, handed her the magazine. "Look at this picture."

The illustration, in gray ink on gray paper, showed an insectile monster holding a swooning girl in its arms. Two men, one erect, one on the ground, were looking at it in horror.

"What about it?"

"The bug has a helmet on its head, like the one they used on me. And look how many arms and legs it's got."

"Six."

"And the aliens have six. So what does that tell us?"

"The aliens are the bad guys?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think so."

She turned the magazine and looked at the cover. The illustration, in violet, red, and green watercolor, showed a gigantic spiderlike thing with eyes on stalks and a jaw like a crocodile's.

"Another monster," she said.

"Right. It's all through those stories, but this one only has four legs."

"Maybe there's two more you can't see."

"Yeah, I thought of that. "

Below the monster was a metal cylinder with portholes and a round open door. Two people were trying to get in the door, but there was a spiderweb across it. In the comer was printed:

DARK MOON

A Novelette of Strange

Adventure on a

Mysterious New Satellite

By CHARLES W. DIFFIN

She looked at the spine: it said "May, 1931."

"Nineteen thirty-one? It doesn't look that old. Where did you get it?"

"I had it with me, they gave it back afterwards."

After a moment, when he didn't speak again, she glanced at him and saw that his body was hunched over, his eyes half-closed.

"That's the Earth," he muttered. "No, not there. In the story, it's on another moon, a dark one."

"Ed?" He didn't seem to hear her. "No, not there either," he said. "It's another moon around the Earth ....In between the Earth and the real Moon. It's a story ....No, not there. It's a story. . . . That's right, there isn't any monster like that. ...No, that isn't real either. There aren't any spaceships yet."

His eyes opened slowly and he straightened up, seemed to see her.

"What happened?" she said.

"I was remembering. Or, I don't know-it's more like the whole thing is happening all over again, or like it's happening now. I can't figure out what's real."

"What was it all about?"

After a moment he said, "They showed me the cover of that magazine, and then this robot put a telepathy helmet on my head and they talked to me in pictures. They wanted to know where that happened, where it was. They showed me different planets. I kept telling them it was a story, and I guess they finally believed me."

"Why do you think they wanted to know?"

"Beats me, unless they were scared there might be people out there in spaceships, or on other planets, that could hurt them.''

She sat looking at her hands for a while. "You know, we do have spaceships now, or did. The space boom collapsed in the sixties, but we had manned landings on the Moon. And some unmanned probes that went as far as Uranus. Now it's all just satellites."

"You think that will ever start up again?"

"I don't know. Maybe if things don't keep on getting worse-"

He got up and went to the bar, poured half a glass of rye, added ginger ale. He sat down with the glass in his hand, looked at it, then took a long swallow.

"Isn't it a little early for that?"

He looked at her. "Sure it is, but what else have I got?" He raised the glass again. "Don't tell me it's bad for me, for Pete's sake. Here's looking at you, kid."