Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 28

In the morning she found him hunched over the Astounding cover, measuring it with a protractor. She got a cup of coffee and wandered over to look. "See this?" he said, pointing to the three human figures at the bottom. "See how funny the two guys look? That's because all four of their legs are bent at the same angle, about a hundred twenty degrees. It makes them look like mechanical dolls or something."

"And their legs are too long. Maybe he used lay figures." "What's that?"

"Jointed wooden figures. You can buy them in art stores."

"Oh. But then their legs wouldn't be too long, would they?"

"Maybe he just couldn't draw. "

"No. Now look at this, it isn't quite as obvious, but the girl sitting on the ground, her legs are bent at the same angle, a hundred twenty degrees, and if you figure in perspective, so are the monster's legs. So it's a number, a code. What does it mean?"

"Well, it adds up to three. Threes are a lot like fives, they're restless, inventive, charming and so on."

"But not the same?"

"No."

"Or it could be days, couldn't it? There are three hundred sixty degrees in a circle, and three hundred sixty-five days in a year. "

"I know, but what makes you think it has to be a code?"

"Just a hunch. Something else it could mean, these human beings look like puppets, and they are puppets, and so are the monsters. I don't like that."

He stared at the picture. "Here's another funny thing. Look at the door of the spaceship. You'd think it would be circular, but it's oval, and it looks like the opening is facing you, even though the cylinder is laying at an angle. Then the curve of the front end hits the line of the top here and stops, as if there was only half a cylinder there."

"The artist couldn't draw."

"Yes, he could. He drew great machinery, and monsters and landscapes. Suppose he wanted to say something like, 'This isn't a spaceship, just a mockup'? Like a movie set, where the houses look real but there's nothing behind them? And look at the monster. It isn't really a spider, there aren't any segments, just a big squishy body like a caterpillar. It has a nose like a bull, and the feet look like rat fret."

"A chimera."

"What's that?"

"A fabulous beast made by putting parts of different animals together. Like a gryphon-it has the wings and head of an eagle, the body and tail of a lion."

"Okay, but that's mythology, right? This guy was illustrating science fiction. So maybe he's saying, 'Forget it, these stories aren't real, there aren't any spaceships and there aren't any monsters in space. But the readers knew that. Why bother to tell them? Unless it wasn't true?"

"Are you saying this artist knew something in nineteen thirty-one that we're just finding out now?"

"They all did. Why not? How do we know how long the aliens have been here?"

"Ed, if they kidnapped those people before they did you, why would they ask you those questions about the magazine?"

He scratched his nose. "I never thought of that. Well, I guess they already knew what Diffin thought of those magazines-he was an author. They wanted to find out what I thought about them, because I'm just an ordinary guy."

"The hell you are, but never mind. "