The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes (8 page)

She sat on the sofa. Kelly pulled a chair before her, crossed his legs, and using his kneecap as a desk, opened his attaché case. He took out a form, uncapped a pen, and looked across at her. The forms in his hand seemed to stabilize him, as similar forms had steadied Peterson.

“Give me your last name, first name, and middle initial.”

“Lavaslatta, Kyra. No middle initial.”

“How do you spell it?”

“I don’t know. Spell it for him, Breedlove.”

Breedlove spelled her name, and Kelly wrote it down in block letters.

“What is the country of your origin?”

“I come from a planet my people called Kanab.”

“Where is Kanab located?”

“Nowhere. It is gone.”

“Well, let’s just enter ‘Nowhere.’ ” Kelly’s officiousness was returning, but now briskly cordial “Where was your former planet located?”

“Without a star chart I can only say somewhere in space.”

“Very well, we’ll just put ‘Somewhere.’ Where is your closest living relative?”

“She would have to be at least five hundred light years away.”

“ ‘Closest living relative, five hundred light years away.’ ” Kelly addressed himself briskly as he wrote. “What is your political affiliation?”

“Political affiliation?”

“What philosophy of government do you embrace?”

“I believe in the sisterhood of all living creatures.”

“ ‘The sisterhood of all living creatures.’ That’s a new one on me, but different strokes for different folks.”

It was a long form, but Kelly was extremely helpful. In fact, he became hopelessly involved in a series of questions he himself answered. The questionnaire would have defied interpretation by any immigration clerk, and it was compromising Kelly as hopelessly as the UFO had compromised Peterson, but Breedlove did not interrupt the man. It was his method of coming to grips with the reality of Kyra.

He finished the form, signed it, and handed it across to Kyra. “Write your signature below mine. You may keep the original for your files.”

She signed in Kanabian script, tore off the top sheet, and handed it to Breedlove. “File this for me, very carefully.”

Her accent on “very carefully” alerted Breedlove to the importance of the document, an importance he was already aware of. He folded it and put it in the envelope with his orders from Peterson. As Kelly started to return his copies to the attaché case, he paused and took a second look at the form. He looked up at Breedlove.

“Ranger Breedlove, this is a rather unusual document. I think you should witness it.”

“No, sir. I can’t certify it. I doubt if it’s verifiable even by Kyra. What I suggest instead is that we sit down and discuss the ramifications of Miss Lavaslatta’s arrival.”

Surprisingly Kelly did not seem aggrieved at Breedlove’s refusal. Instead, he nodded judiciously. “I’m sure you’re right. That other descent from heaven had far-reaching consequences. No sacrilege intended, miss. We’re got a problem, Breedlove: who’s going to believe this? You wouldn’t have a spot of whisky around the house, would you, Tom?”

“Name your poison, Al.”

Kelly took two fingers of bourbon, neat, in one swallow, and looked around him dazedly, but the whisky braced him. His sense of reality was returning, Breedlove knew, when he muttered to no one in particular, “Peterson passed the buck.”

For a long moment he stared at the far wall as if analyzing the wallpaper. Finally his eyes swung back to the girl. “I knew you were from another planet, Kyra, when I walked into the room.”

With a soft fluttering in her voice, Kyra asked, “How did you know I was from another planet, Al?”

“Because there’s never been anything as beautiful as you on God’s green earth.”

Emotion gave Kelly’s cliché a wild, piercing Celtic beauty. Kyra’s green eyes drew in the light from the room and sent it out again in glitterings, and she smiled on Kelly. With that smile Breedlove knew Kelly was hooked. He moved to take command of the situation, seating himself beside Kyra.

“Al, we’re faced with a situation unique in human history. Kyra and her small band of exiles are looking for a planet with an oxygen environment. She landed on earth because her fuel source decayed in flight, and she needs a new supply of uranium 235.”

“That brings the Atomic Energy Commission into the picture.”

“Definitely, which means she’ll need authentication that the fuel is not to be used for military purposes. In turn, this means her identity has to be established beyond question. I can speak for the Department of Interior because any evidence I have is not hearsay. I inspected her space vehicle.”

“But you’re a ranger. You have no security rating.”

“No, but I have the original data that’s to be classified.”

Kelly smiled, his old, officious smile. “I’m prepared to take your deposition, Ranger Breedlove, and relieve you of custody of the immigrant.”

“You don’t have the security clearance to accept my testimony, Mr. Kelly, so I’m not yielding custody. I’m going with her.”

“Any person in this country without identification papers and no proof of citizenship falls under the custodial control of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

He arose and turned to Kyra. “I didn’t want to put this to you so bluntly, miss, but you’re under arrest. Get your things together. We’re going to Seattle.”

Kelly had drawn the bureaucratic battle lines, but he had drawn them in the wrong place.

“Sit down, Al. She’s going nowhere without me. From the nature of the form you’ve filled out and signed, I judge you incapable of taking sole control of an endangered species of park fauna previously entrusted to the park ranger who discovered it. Kyra’s not a person. She’s an unclassified member of the animal kingdom, maybe. Even her animality is in doubt.”

Incredulity spread over Kelly’s face, but not confusion. “She may not be a member of the family Hominidae,” he snapped, “but it’s plain she belongs to the class Mammalia, even if you don’t often find the likes of her outside Italy.”

“Her breast development merely demonstrates that nature works from universal patterns. In Africa, Asia, or on the Planet Kanab, form follows function.”

“No, Breedlove,” Kyra interjected, “function follows form.”

Breedlove took her interruption in stride. “Which proves the point I’m trying to make. There’s disagreement all around. Kyra may not be an animal at all. She may descend from an air-nourished plant. The natural color of her hair is green—here, look at this snapshot I took last night… Her hair is green because it is capable of photosynthesizing sunlight, a characteristic exclusive to plants on earth. Kyra gets part of her nourishment from sunlight.”

“Now who’s crazy?”

“You’ll notice I’m telling you this, Kelly. I’m not writing it down. I’ll leave the biological depositions to the biologists. They’ll have to depose as to whether she’s plant or animal, but in either event her habitat is the Selkirk Wilderness Area, which puts her under my jurisdiction, and, flora or fauna, she’s threatened with extinction. She stays in my custody.”

“She’s an unregistered alien.”

Kelly was clinging to his one certitude with a weakening grip, and Breedlove began to pry his fingers loose.

“Even that’s open to question. As a representative of a foreign power, protocol places her under the jurisdiction of the State Department.”

“Oh, no! Not another bureau.”

“All she needs is a visitor’s permit you’re empowered to grant under your own cognizance. I’m willing to let your quarantine doctors determine her biological status, and you can share in the announcement of her arrival on earth, but I’m claiming joint jurisdiction until her status is determined.”

Kelly was confused. Breedlove’s tone became authoritative.

“The big problem is to get her the uranium. Before that, I have been given authority to see she’s properly housed, fed, and clothed.”

“Look, Tom,” Kelly said, “it’s Sunday. It’ll be late afternoon before we get her to Seattle. The medical examiners won’t schedule her before Monday morning. For security reasons she’d better stay at my house. I have a wife and two daughters—”

“Not a chance, Al. I’ll see that she’s registered in a hotel at Park’s expense. This is for your sake, Al. Kyra has a very unsettling influence on men’s wives.”

Kelly glanced wistfully at Kyra and nodded. “I understand. I’m willing to go along with you, Tom, for visiting rights after she’s cleared quarantine. But as long as we’re going to cooperate, why don’t you show good faith and give me back my Alien Registration Form.”

“Certainly, Al.” Breedlove removed the paper and handed it to him. “Now come meet my family. They’ve all been sworn to secrecy, and they want to tell Kyra goodbye.”

On the local flight to Seattle, which touched down at Tacoma, Breedlove was mostly left alone to doze intermittently and awaken to strange confusions. Kyra wanted a window seat, and the two men wanted her there to guard her from casual conversations with people in the aisle. Kelly shouldered past Breedlove to take the middle seat beside her, saying, “You’ll have her all this evening. I want her for the flight.”

She had brought along the fashion magazine, which lay unopened in her lap as she studied the landscape below, asking “Al” about landmarks and place names. In less than five minutes she had been calling Peterson “Pete,” yet she always called him the formal “Breedlove.” Now she sat huddled with the solicitous Irishman, and for all the attention he was getting Breedlove could have been in North Dakota.

A vague hurt roiled him, like none he had felt since high school, when he had blurted out an invitation to the girl he wanted to take to the prom and found her already promised to a football star. Stretched out on the seat, a pillow under his head, he regurgitated the sour aftertaste of adolescent rejections and tried to ignore the chattel beside him. He feigned sleep so successfully he dozed until he was aroused by a new note of excitement in Kyra’s voice.

Apparently they were flying over clouds, for Kyra’s attention had turned to the magazine on her lap, and she was showing Al the Polinski Creation.

“I see it’s sold in Seattle,” Al was saying, “at Mason’s department store. If the Jolly Green Giant will let me have you for lunch after you’re out of quarantine, I’ll take you shopping. Maybe I’ll buy you that fantastic creation.”

“Terrific, Al. I’d love you to death for that little number.”

Breedlove was twice disturbed. A married man such as Kelly on a government employee’s salary would not be buying a girl a $720 dress for altruistic reasons, and nice girls did not accept such expensive gifts from married men. Kyra would have to be lectured discreetly on this subject.

On the ground in Seattle, Breedlove was brought back into the party when Kyra took his arm possessively on the way to baggage pickup and asked, “Does my Jolly Green Giant feel refreshed after his wholesome rest on the plane?”

He didn’t particularly care for Al’s cute expression, but his only indication of disapproval was in the restraint of his smile.

Kelly drove them to the Federal Building in his 1973 Plymouth coupé he had left at the airport. At his office he called the medical facility at the Navy base and arranged with the duty officer for Kyra to report Monday at 0800 for her physical examination. At the same time he arranged for Breedlove to escort her onto the base and to the sick bay. He called a family motel near Lake Washington to reserve two suites for them, then he carefully filled in a new Alien Registration Form, with Breedlove’s assistance, which the ranger witnessed.

Since the offices were closed for Sunday, Kelly had no secretary, and it took the two men almost an hour to fill out the form. Once during the session Kyra excused herself to go to the women’s lounge, and Kelly took advantage of her absence to advise Breedlove: “Tom, you strike me as a sensible young man, not one to go overboard with the hanky-panky, but remember, Kyra has not passed quarantine yet. As pretty as she is, she might be carrying some exotic disease fatal to human beings.”

Breedlove accepted the advice, but he was not deluded. He had the definite impression that if Kyra had any communicable diseases, Kelly wanted to be the first to catch them.

After signing the forms, Kyra was a registered resident of the U.S.A., whatever else her status, and Kelly wasn’t done. He took them to the basement garage and assigned Breedlove a Lincoln automobile usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. As he drove the car from the basement with Kyra beside him, Breedlove felt life within him turning to a pleasant tension it had not achieved since the strings snapped in the high-school-prom debacle. He was looking forward with a teenager’s enthusiasm to a night on the town with the prettiest girl in the school.

The motel where Kelly reserved their rooms was a two-story Spanish-mission-style structure built around a swimming pool in its completely enclosed quadrangle. One of a California-based chain, the motel retained a California flavor even to two artificial palm trees overhanging the pool. After they checked in, Breedlove, mindful of Kyra’s love of twilights, suggested they drive to the campus of the University of Washington to watch the sunset.

On the campus few students were abroad on a Sunday afternoon, and he took her on a tour, showing her the various buildings where his classes had been, talking of professors and of student escapades. Passing the library, she remarked, “You must teach me to read, Breedlove.”

She listened to his stories with a grave serenity so different from her usual animation that he asked, “Why are you so pensive, Kyra?”

“You are remembering an old happiness, and such memories are sacred. Breedlove, I wish I could have shared your happiness.”

Her vivacity revived near the stadium. A group of young athletes emerged from the field house, four whites and three blacks, and as they approached Breedlove and Kyra the emanations of their libidos seemed to crest ahead of them. Coming closer, they moved from the path politely to skirt the ranger and the girl, but once past they looked back and whistled their admiration.

“They approve of you, Kyra.”

“You earth men come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and there are so many of you.”