Starman (12 page)

“The package was designed so that any species intelligent enough to recover it and decipher its contents would be able to pick up a working knowledge of basic English, along with a few words of this and that in half a hundred other languages. I would’ve opted to include more English and less of the peripheral terran tongues, but the final decision on what to include was as much political as scientific. So anyone decoding the English therein would obtain a rough idea of syntax and a few hundred words and that’s all. There’s not enough in there to enable a listener to gain fluency.”

“This guy seems to be making himself understood.”

“So does Clint Eastwood, and he doesn’t talk much either. He’s learning, every day, sir. It’s quite an achievement, when you think about it. He’s not only employing an alien language, his own means of communication may consist of something entirely different from modulated sound waves. We’ve no idea, remember, of what his real body is like.”

“When he duplicated this Scott Hayden,” Fox asked, “how come he didn’t duplicate his memories as well as his brain?”

“Memories consist of stored series of electric impulses. They’re not part of the genetic code. He could duplicate Scott Hayden’s brain, but not his experiences.”

“Have you any idea,” Goldman suddenly broke in, “what it would mean to talk to a being from a civilization like that? If their moral and aesthetic development advanced on a par with the technological, think of what we could learn from . . .”

He broke off as the music ceased and a new voice addressed them from the speakers.

“As the secretary-general of the United Nations, an organization of one hundred and forty-seven member nations who represent nearly all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings . . .”

“Greetings.” Shermin reached over to nudge the mute control, shutting out the rest of Waldheim’s speech. “That’s what he said to Heinmuller out there on the road. I don’t see what you’re so concerned about.”

“Because that’s also what the cannibal said to the missionary just before he ate him.”

“The question in this case,” Shermin said deliberately, “is: who is the missionary and who are the cannibals? Remember, we shot at his ship, he didn’t shoot at us.”

“We didn’t know it was a ship, and the directives concerning unauthorized intrusions into U.S. air space are pretty straightforward. Particularly when the intruder is of an unfamiliar type and likes to go flying over nuclear submarine bases.”

“Paranoia,” muttered Goldman.

Fox turned on him sharply. “Is it? Whatever you want to call it, it’s my business and I’m charged with seeing that it doesn’t threaten the security of this country. Why don’t you ask this Jenny Hayden if I’m being paranoid?” Goldman didn’t have a ready reply for that one. The matter of Jenny Hayden’s possible abduction had been giving him and Shermin a lot of trouble.

Fox took the mute off the player and ran through the fast-forward. Snatches of greetings in many different languages ran together in a rapid-fire, meaningless babble. Finally they gave way to more music. Symphonic at first, then ethnic, then Mick Jagger rasping out, “I can’t get no, sat-is-fac-tion.”

Fox shook his head dubiously. “I can’t believe that grown men actually sent this crap into space.”

The late afternoon sun was bright as it shone through the Mustang’s windshield, but it no longer troubled the starman. Not with the bill of the baseball cap pulled down low to shield his eyes. It was tugged down almost too far, but he needed all the help he could get. He had yet to get used to the spectrum of the local sun, even though he was viewing his surroundings through eyes engineered to make use of it. For one thing, the atmosphere was full of water vapor that played tricks with the fading light.

Jenny had been thinking quietly for some time. Now she looked over at him. “I was wondering: you’ve pretty much got the hang of driving down, and if you meant it about not wanting to, you know, take me up there with you, then why don’t you just let me out? You could take the car and a credit card and I could . . .”

“No!” Aware he’d spoken with unwarranted harshness, he hastened to soften his tone. “You look for food station, please.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Disappointed, she settled back in her seat.

The road veered due west, leading them straight into the orange ball of the setting sun. She watched as the starman squinted tighter and tighter, until tears began to trickle down his cheeks. He must know so much about other things, things I can’t even imagine, she thought, but here he’s like a fish out of water. Not to mention his present body.

She reached over to lower the sun visor. Relief was immediate. He studied it for a second, then turned to her. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Listen, when do you have to be there?”

“What?”

“Arizona. Where you’re meeting your friends. Is there some special time you have to be there by?”

“I will explain.” He nodded forward. “You see this little star ahead of us?”

She peered hard through the windshield, but the sun was still too high for anything else to be out. “What little star? Where?”

He pointed this time, at the setting sun. “You must see it. You see it every day. That little star, there.”

“That’s not a star. We call that the sun.”

“Call it what you like. It is a star. A very small one. Of no cosmological importance. Except to you, of course.” He hunted around on the floor until he located a crumpled piece of paper. “Do you remember showing me this before?”

She recognized the road atlas. “So?”

“You called this a map. There are other kinds of maps. Maps of stars. Your map shows big cities, little cities. Other maps show important stars, small stars.” Again he nodded forward. “Very small star. Isolated. Away from the center. Not important.”

“Well, we like it,” she mumbled, abashed.

He considered her reaction. “I do not say this to make you feel bad. My star is not big either. Facts are not designed to make anyone feel bad. They are for explaining.” He reached over to pat her knee, copying a gesture he’d observed another couple executing. “When this little—when the sun appears,” and he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, “back there, three times more, I must be in Arizona-maybe.”

“It’s just Arizona,” she corrected him absently. “You’re talking about daybreak. You have to be there at dawn, in two days?”

He nodded. “Yes. No longer.”

“What happens if you don’t make it? If you don’t get there in time? Don’t you have any leeway? Any extra time at all?”

“No. If I am not there at that time, they will go. My friends. They must. They strain the law by coming even this one time.”

“They’ll go—without you?”

“Yes.”

“What will you do then?”

There was no expression on his face at all. “Then the component chemicals which make up the being that is me will return again to the ever-changing brew of elements of which the universe is comprised.” She frowned at this and he added simply, “I will die.”

“But why? Can’t you stay here like you are, in that body?” She let her gaze rove over him, saw no sign of incipient disintegration, no hint of decay to come. “You look healthy enough.”

“I am glad of that, but it is much easier to maintain outward appearances than interior functions. My continuing occupancy of this form is maintained partly by illusion, partly by constant effort. I am under a continual strain. It is painful and daily becomes more so. I can only live this way, inside this body, for a very short time. Soon after the third dawn I will lose my ability to keep it functioning, and it will fail as a mind-support system. I will be dead. Body will be dead, mind will die. Understand?”

She didn’t reply. Not for the first time, he wondered what she must think of him. He turned his attention back to his driving.

“You look for food station,” he told her softly.

Another five minutes’ drive brought them within sight of a sign. It was insistent, and a bit too big for the road.

BOWDARKS BUS STOP

CAFE GOOD EATS BILLIARDS
2
MI AHEAD

“There’s a place up ahead that looks good,” Jenny told him. “Besides, it’s getting late and I don’t think I can go much further without something to eat, even if it’s full of grease.”

“Emptiness inside,” the starman agreed.

She wondered if he was just talking about his stomach.

There were only a few cars in the lot when they pulled in. That did not necessarily imply criticism of the cuisine; they were a long ways from the nearest town. The terrain surrounding the restaurant was heavily forested, just like the country they’d been driving through for several hours now. Then too, it was not quite dusk. Early for fellow long-distance travelers to be stopping to eat.

One of the cars, a beat-up old sedan of indeterminate lineage, had a dead five-point buck strapped to the left front fender. The car’s owner was locking his rifle in the trunk as they pulled in. Jenny watched him test the latch to make sure the trunk was secured before he turned and headed for the roadhouse door.

As they came around the sedan the starman had his first sight of the dead deer. Having no reason to expect anything abnormal, Jenny was startled when he slammed on the brakes.

“Whoa, take it easy, friend. The idea with brakes is to . . .” she broke off, seeing the expression on his face. It was twisted. Horror, fear and utter confusion were all mixed up together by someone who was uncertain of just how to manipulate his facial muscles to achieve the exact look he was seeking. There was nothing mysterious about the cause, however. He was staring at the dead animal as though hypnotized.

“What?” he finally managed to mumble.

“Deer. It’s hunting season in this part of the country. Scott used to hunt, sometimes. We both liked venison. Fried tenderloin’s about the best thing you can eat.” Memories began to well up inside her once again. She forced them back down as she nodded toward the car. “That’s a dead deer.”

He considered this a moment. Then he carefully put the emergency brake on, removed the key from the ignition, and got out. Instead of moving toward the restaurant, he crossed in front of the Mustang and headed for the old sedan. Seeing this, the hunter paused at the cafe’s entrance. His eyes narrowed as he saw the stranger approach his kill.

The starman stared at the corpse. The deer’s tongue was hanging out and its eyes were still open. “Dead deer. Why?”

Jenny came up behind him. “I told you. People hunt them. To eat. For food, fuel.”

“Fuel. Our fuel is different. Do deer eat people?”

“Well, no, but . . .”

“Do people eat people?”

“Of course not. What do you think we are?”

“I think you are a primitive species that does not understand its place in the scheme of existence.” He gestured at the limp form lying across the fender. “Beautiful life. Beautiful form and shape. Functional and beautiful. You destroy beauty. It is a mark of ignorance to destroy beauty. There are other ways of getting fuel.” Tenderly he reached out to caress the dead animal’s flank.

That was enough for the hunter. He wasn’t much of a philosopher, but in his book anti-hunting nuts ranked somewhere down there among commie pinkos and drug addicts. He moved quickly toward the parking lot. Never one to back away from a challenge, he knew one when he heard it. Damned conservationists were all over the place.

“What are you,” he asked the stranger, “soft-hearted? Cry when you saw
Bambi
?” He stopped with his face only inches from the starman’s.

“Define
‘Bambi.’ ”

“Huh?” The hunter took a wary step backward. Anti-hunting fruits were one thing, but real looney tunes were something else again. He eyed the stranger the way one does an ace of diamonds in an opponent’s hand that just happens to have raspberry jam smeared on one corner.

Jenny tried to intercede. “He doesn’t understand,” she explained hastily. “He’s not from around here.”

“Oh, yeah? Then where’s he come off criticizing an all-American pastime like hunting?” He stuck his face back into the starman’s. “No spikka da Inglish? Then hows about you keepa you mouth shut?”

Nonplussed by the proximity of this loud belligerent the starman retreated. Jenny grabbed his arm and gave the hunter her best apologetic smile. Then she steered her companion toward the beckoning cafe. For a moment she was afraid the man was going to challenge them again, but he stood guard over his deer and let them pass.

“Steer clear of these bozos,” she whispered to him.

Puzzled but anxious to please, the still confused starman asked plaintively, “Define ‘bozos’.”

“Don’t look back, but that guy’s one.”

The hunter followed them with his eyes until they vanished inside the cafe. His expression did not change, although he found his interest shifting from the critical stranger to the young woman holding onto his arm.

It was getting dark outside the hangar as the three men walked toward the olive green army car. The driver quickly flipped his cigarette aside and stood to attention.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.” Fox spoke slowly for his own benefit, not that of his two companions. “I damn well better have it straight because I’m going to have to tell it several times to some very important people. People who don’t like ambiguous explanations.

“Both of you think—no, check that. Both of you are
convinced
that an alien has arrived here. In Wisconsin.” He shook his head in disbelief at that one, anticipating the response it would provoke back in Washington. “And since arriving, he’s cloned himself a human body. A body that it—we’ll call it a he, since he’s chosen a male body—can coexist with and manipulate in a humanlike manner.”

“That’s about it, yes sir,” Shermin admitted.

Fox’s gaze shifted to the other scientist. “You concur, Goldman?”

“Completely. A number of extraordinary events have occurred here in quick succession, Mister Fox, and I don’t have any other explanation for them. I’d like to find another one, believe me, but I can’t. All the physical evidence underscores the validity of Mark’s hypothesis, and that’s not even taking Heinmuller’s encounter into account.”