Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 2

Patrolperson G. W. Griffin, thirty-four, male, anglo, blond, six feet one, one hundred eighty pounds, drove the detainee from the County Correctional Center across town to the New Jersey State Mental Health Care Facility.

It was a bright November day; a wind was whipping the tops of the bare trees, and all the smog from New York had blown off to the east.

The patrol, whose eyesight was 20/20, watched the detainee now and then in the rearview mirror. Stone appeared to be curious about everything he saw. As the cruiser whispered down a residential street, he turned around to look at a yard enclosed by a white picket fence where a boy was struggling with a cat under a spruce tree. The cat was biting him in the stomach, and the boy couldn't pull away. Something dark was hanging from the tree, possibly the tail of another cat. Stone kept watching until they were out of sight; then he straightened around and sat quietly behind the mesh, with his wrists Velcroed.

A moment later the patrol saw a contrail streaking overhead; there was a deafening concussion.

"What was that!" Stone shouted in the ringing silence.

"Sonic boom. Concordes fly too damn low."

"Are they propelled by detonite?" Stone asked. The patrol didn't answer. He turned in to the drive in front of the Facility, unlocked the rear door and pulled the detainee out.

"Do you like being a cop?" Stone asked.

"Sure. Do you like being a coo-coo?"

"No. Thanks for asking."

Two white-coated attendants were waiting outside the door. The patrol stripped the Velcro and turned the detainee over to them. "Have a nice day," he said, and walked back to his humming cruiser.

Early Tuesday morning, when attendants opened the main entrance of the Facility, they found Stone shivering in his pajamas under the roof of the portico. He offered no resistance when they restrained him and took him back to his room.

Dr. Gary Lipshitz, the Chief of Psychiatry, visited him there on his morning rounds. " Edwin," he said, "how did you get outside last night?" Stone was in a straitjacket, but seemed cheerful and talkative.

"The aliens came and got me," he said. "They can go through walls. They knew I wanted to get out of here, but they don't understand about clothing. "

"They don't understand what about clothing?"

"That you have to have it. They gave me mine back, but they gave me a lot of other stuff too, that I had with me, and I think they just don't understand how things work down here."

"How do things work down here, Edwin?"

"By the rules. You have to have clothes on, and you have to have the right papers."

Dr. Lipshitz made a note. "What will you do if you get clothes and the right papers, Edwin?"

"I'll go to New York and look for somebody to build the box."

"What box is that?"

"The box big enough to put the whole human race in."

"Isn't that going to be a pretty big box, Edwin?"

"You bet, Doc."