Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 1

Well, Mr. Stone, what seems to be your problem?" "I think I was kidnapped from nineteen thirty-one and brought here, and I think the aliens sent me back to put the whole human race in a box."

"And why do you think that?"

"Because I'm crazy. "

The psychiatrist blinked and looked more closely at the detainee. He appeared to be a man in his late twenties or early thirties, clean-shaven, with a round cheerful face. He was wearing a brown suit and necktie, and carried a fedora.

The psychiatrist and the detainee were sitting on opposite sides of a chipped gray acrylic conference table with a mandala of coffee rings on it. The panels overhead were humming and buzzing in an irritating lack of rhythm.

"Mr. Stone, can you tell me what year it is?"

"Twenty ought two."

"And who's the President?"

"Tennafly."

The psychiatrist scribed a note. "So, then, you believe you're here because you're crazy?"

"Don't you?"

The psychiatrist blinked again. "Let's go back a little. When did you first realize that you had been kidnapped by aliens?"

"When I woke up on their spaceship."

"And when was that?"

"April fifteenth, nineteen thirty-one. Or the next morning, maybe. That would be the sixteenth."

"What happened then?"

"They hypnotized me and told me to come back and put everybody in a box."

"I see. And so you came back?"

"Well, they brought me back. I got in trouble in the hotel because I wasn't registered, and I didn't have any ID, the kind you use now. All I had on me was some money with old dates on it, and an expired driver's license. The cops took the money. "

"I see. Where were you when you were kidnapped by aliens?"

"Right here, Trenton. I was staying in the same hotel, but it's all different now."

"How is it different?"

The detainee gestured vaguely. "Wallpaper, lights. All the new buildings. Halos, and those gadgets like the one you're using."

The psychiatrist looked at his memopad, scribed in a comment. "And when did your driver's license expire?"

"Thirty-two."

"Nineteen thirty-two?"

"Right. I mean, it was good when I had it, but it ran out the next year, because I was on the spaceship. I was wearing this suit and hat when they arrested me, and the dentist said I have the kind of fillings they used then."

"That would be the correction center dentist?"

"Right. They arrested me for suspicion of felony, and then the judge ordered me to see you, to find out if I'm crazy."

"And you think you are crazy?"

"Well, what else could it be? I think I was born in nineteen ought one, but that would make me a hundred and one years old, right? And I have these ideas about aliens and spaceships, so I'm crazy."

The psychiatrist cleared his throat. "How do you account for the fillings?"

"I can't. The dentist couldn't figure it out either."

The psychiatrist scrolled through the documents in his file. No previous record, no prints. "Tell me, how do you feel about the aliens?"

"I love them, but they scare me."

"Why do they scare you?"

" Because I don't know what they're going to do with us after they get us all in a box."

"What do you think they're going to do?"

"Well, they say they're going to take us to another planet before the Earth is destroyed, but I'm not so sure."

"What is the name of this other planet?"

"I don't know. The aliens don't use words like we do."

"How do they use words?"

"I mean, they don't use them at all. They have these symbols, kind of like Chinese writing, that flash on their foreheads."

The psychiatrist nodded several times. "And is that how they told you about the other planet?"

"No, they used a telepathy helmet when they hypnotized me. Are you going to tell the judge to send me to a nuthouse?"

"Is that what you want me to do?"

"I don't care. I can get out all right, but I don't want this charge hanging over me."

"You mean you can get out of the mental health care facility?"

"Oh, sure."

"What will you do, just walk out?"

"No, I'll tell the head doctor to certify me sane, and he'll let me go."

"Why will he do that?"

"Because I'll touch him with my ring."

Guardperson Eldon Wiggan, forty-six, anglo, five feet eight, two hundred fifty pounds, took the detainee back to the tank. "Hey, do you have to grab me that hard?" the detainee asked.

Wiggan slammed him against the wall. "That hurt?"

"Oh, yeah."