Starman (13 page)

Fox sighed deeply. “All right. I have to rely on your opinions. Heaven help you if you’re wrong. Now, I think I can understand this business of physical replication, but how does the alien individual exist inside it? If he’s inhabiting this duplicate of the late Scott Hayden, then what did he do with his own body?” He gestured with his head toward the massive hangar. “We didn’t find any skeletons in that spacecraft—I think we can all stop referring to it as a ‘meteor.’ ”

“In its original form the alien may not have needed a solid skeleton, sir,” Goldman told him. “It may not normally make use of an inflexible frame as we know it. It might be an invertebrate form, like a mollusk.”

“It might be accustomed to living in a cloud of dense gas,” Shermin suggested, “or in a concentrated magnetic field. It may be as far advanced in body as it apparently is in technology.”

“Wonderful,” Fox grumbled. “I’ve heard about having to deal with a collection of ideas, but not literally.”

“Many think that a supercivilization will eventually develop a means for dispensing with much of what we consider necessary in the way of a physical envelope,” Shermin explained. “That’s all that a body is: an envelope, a package largely filled up with empty space and crude life-support systems.” He glanced at Goldman. “Dave’s right in guessing that it requires
some
kind of body to survive here. Otherwise it wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of replicating Scott Hayden’s.

“Perhaps its own body was damaged during the forced landing, or didn’t survive long in our environment. The first thing a visitor to an alien world would need is a spacesuit. What better suit than the body of one of the dominant local life forms?

“As for the rest of the alien’s ‘self,’ well, we’re just starting to understand what the self is comprised of. Just for the sake of discussion, let’s imagine that you could reduce everything that is someone to a sequence of electrical impulses. That’s how we store information in computers. Think of a child’s brain as a blank floppy disk, ready to be encoded with useful information. Under normal circumstances, information is imprinted on the human brain over a period of time, but theoretically one could receive a lifetime’s knowledge in a few seconds, if we just knew how to make the transfer. Just like you’d transfer music from one tape to another.

“After the transfer’s completed, you discard the old, damaged tape and just play the new one. Same music in a new home. It’s the music that’s vital, not the tape. The tape’s just a mechanism. So is a human body.”

“Crazy,” Fox muttered. “I want a scientific explanation for what’s going on and all I get from you two are metaphysics.”

“A rose by any other name,” Goldman put in. “Crazy it is. Impossible it ain’t. Not theoretically, any way. Personally, I can see transferring thoughts and mental abilities from one mind to another a lot easier than I can conceive of cloning a new body from a single cell, and yet we have actual proof of the latter.

“What it boils down to, Mister Fox, is that we human beans have got us some company, wanted or not. That’s reality, not metaphysics.”

“All right, you’ve convinced me. I don’t know how much of this I really believe, but you’re right about one thing; I haven’t got a better explanation for what’s happened here either. So what we’re dealing with now is an alien super-intellect in a cloned human body.” They’d reached the car. The driver came around to open the door. Fox hesitated before entering, glanced curiously back at Shermin.

“What we don’t have yet is motivation. Any notion as to why we’ve got company just now? Any idea what a visitor like the one you two have described would want here?”

Shermin extracted a cigar from an inside jacket pocket and prepared to light up. The smoke would aggravate Fox, which was one of the scientist’s favorite hobbies. He’d refined it to perfection the past couple of years. Sometimes Fox would protest and sometimes not. How strongly he reacted was a good clue as to how he was feeling about whatever subject happened to be under discussion at the time.

“I can think of any number of possibilities. Maybe he’s an explorer, doing his field work. Only, the natives have up and interfered. Or maybe he’s a tourist gone off the beaten galactic track in search of interesting snapshots to show the folks back home. But I kind of like the idea that he’s here to check us over and see how we’re doing in relation to a particular theorem derived from catastrophe theory.”

“Come again?” Fox asked.

“There’s a hypothesis that says that once a civilization has reached our level of technology, it will do one of two things. Either it will get its collective act together and make peace among its constituent tribes, settle old differences, and then make the big jump out into deep space like grown-ups should, or else . . .”

“Or else what?”

“Or else it will muddle along like a bunch of spoiled brats until it blows itself all to hell.”

Fox nodded, then said politely but firmly, “Excuse me, but would you mind not lighting that cigar until after I’ve left. You were saying?”

Shermin reluctantly put the cigar back in its pocket. “I was saying that in so many words, maybe he’s just come here to enjoy the fireworks.”

“Yes. Well, if that’s all, then we don’t have much to worry about. Nobody’s going to blow anybody up. I have the assurance of the president on that.”

“Aplomb in the face of Armageddon.” Shermin shook his head wistfully. “I wish I could be as cool about it as you, sir.”

“The world is not going to destroy itself.” Fox spoke with the conviction of a man soon to begin collecting his pension. “Not if the IRS has anything to say about it.”

Shermin grinned at the sally in spite of himself. Fox could be a real bastard and then just when you thought you had him figured out, he could surprise you. He forced himself to get serious again.

“There is one thing that’s been bothering me, sir. The local cops have put out an APB on our visitor. They’ve got him described as armed and extremely dangerous.”

“So?”

“Get it canceled. Some town whittler with a part-time badge in East Pisspot, Nebraska, could read that and blow him away before we’ve had our chance to meet with him.”

“I’d be glad to, Mark, except for one thing. Half the police force in the north central states have already been told that he’s kidnapped a local woman. We got here too late to kill that story.

“If I put pressure on now to cancel the APB, the cops hereabouts are going to demand to know why. Right now this whole business is back page, one line local news. If I apply pressure to gag it, at least one cop is going to try to play hero by leaking it to the media. One always does. Word gets out that we’re messing around with something a helluva lot more animated than a chunk of meteoric rock and all hell’s going to break loose. We’ll have the networks down on us from one side and Washington from the other. I can’t risk that.”

“Can you risk having this alien killed before we’ve had a chance to talk with him?”

“If he wanted to talk to us all he’d have to do is walk into the nearest police station or federal building and turn himself in. We’d spirit him away from the local yokels soon enough.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it’s that easy.”

“You’re really rationalizing this thing’s behavior, aren’t you? Okay, if he doesn’t know what to do, why doesn’t he just ask the girl? If he wanted to make contact with the authorities, he’s got someone to explain the proper procedures to him.”

Shermin looked away, into the night sky. “I can’t answer that one. Only she can.”

“Sure, that’s right,” Fox said smoothly, “and she can’t answer our questions because it’s pretty clear that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t want her talking to anyone else. Otherwise he’d let her go. Wouldn’t he?”

“I still think you ought to have that armed and dangerous bit canceled before we lose our first and only chance to date to contact an extraterrestrial civilization.”

“It’s your job to find him before that can happen.” Fox got into the back seat of the car. The engine growled and Shermin stared as his boss was driven away into the fading light. He took out the cigar again, but this time eyed it distastefully and tossed it aside.

Goldman was sympathetic. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

“No harder than he deserves. No harder than his head.”

“He’s only doing the job. You can’t expect a senior bureaucrat to see anything beyond his immediate personal concerns.”

“I know,” Shermin muttered. He kicked the cigar, watched it sail across the tarmac. “That’s what’s so frustrating.”

The cafe was much bigger than it looked from the outside. It was an old building constructed of open woodwork. Animal heads were mounted on the big beam that supported the ceiling above the counter, alternating with pictures of the surrounding countryside. Up front was a smaller counter on which rested a cash register and a bowl of toothpicks. The case beneath the register contained a reservoir of ancient candy bars. An Elks’ charity gumball machine stood in one corner.

In addition to the counter and the booths for diners there was a dance floor in the back, deserted now, and off to the left pool tables and a couple of old video games. Nothing separated the dance floor and the four-stool bar it fronted from the dining area.

The hunter who’d confronted the starman outside was engaged in a noisy and badly played game of eight-ball with his hunting buddies. A fair number of empty beer cans had already accumulated in their vicinity. Those opened but not yet sucked dry hung around like remoras waiting to attach themselves to their parent fish. In addition to the faint lament of country music from the region of the bar and the clack of pool balls smacking off one another there was a great deal of laughter brought about by coarse comments of the kind usually referred to by denizens of the lower depths as “humor.”

From time to time the conversation would lapse while someone attempted a particularly difficult shot. The shot invariably missed, just as the deer killer’s attention invariably wandered during such moments from the game into the dining room—and to Jenny.

What was a sassy little piece like her doing with a foreign nerd like that? He couldn’t figure it.

Jenny sat on one side of the booth with the starman across from her. Spread out on the table between them was her badly rumpled map of the United States. She was tracing a route through the mountain states with a red felt pen.

“From Denver—that’s where we’re near—it’s south to Interstate 25. You pick up I-40 westbound at Albuquerque and . . .”

She stopped when she saw that her companion wasn’t paying attention. It was unusual for him to stray like that. He was looking out the window toward the parking lot and she didn’t have to guess at what was drawing his attention away from her.

“Hey, forget the deer for a minute, okay? You can’t do anything about it and I’m trying to show you something important. At least, you told me that it was important.” She tapped the map with the butt end of her marker. “Now exactly where in Arizona are you supposed to meet your friends?”

The starman looked back down at the map. This time he studied it closely. “A strange kind of map, Jennyhayden. It shows many of what you call roads, but few of the important things.”

“You’ve already told me that and I’ve already told you I can’t do a thing about it. Complain to the Auto Club. It’s all I’ve got.”

His finger moved over the paper, finally stopped at a place south of U.S. 40 between the towns of Winslow and Flagstaff. Jenny leaned forward and frowned.

“Here? West of Winslow? I see a little speck on the map called Rimmy Jim’s, but there’s nothing south of that for a hundred miles except,” she looked back up at him. “The big crater. Is that where they’re going to meet you? Where that meteor hit millions of years ago? I read about that place in school.”

“Yes. It is the only place. You would not understand if I tried to tell you why it is the only place. It has to do with certain metals the meteor left behind in the ground when it struck and with,” he struggled with his rapidly improving but still unsteady English, “lines of force that englobe your planet. My friends can only approach at certain places and certain times. On this continent this is the best place.” He placed his finger directly over the National Monument.

“Okay. That’s empty country and this isn’t summertime, so there shouldn’t be a lot of tourists around. You shouldn’t have any problem finding it by yourself if you have to. You sure you understand how to get there now?”

“Yes.” A pause, then, “Why do you do this?”

“Better safe than sorry. I’m showing you in case something should happen to me. There’s just one more thing. The credit card, for gasoline. You saw how that worked.”

She took her wallet out of her purse and fumbled through it, pulled out the card and muttered something under her breath as a half dozen other slips of this and that were pulled out with it. Typical of her wallet: jammed to overflowing with everything except money.

“Why should something happen to you?” The question was asked as if he was testing her for evidence of clairvoyance.

“Who knows? The way you drive, traveling with you could be detrimental to someone’s health.” She essayed a forced grin and couldn’t tell if he was buying her story or not.

He watched her for another moment before his attention dropped to the multitude of objects which had tumbled out onto the table. He reached down and picked one up before she thought to stop him. It was a photograph of two people, standing close together on a beach. Waves rolled behind them and the sun was just setting. He recognized Jenny and the man whose body he’d replicated.

She swallowed hard when she saw which picture he’d retrieved. “That’s me and Scott on our honeymoon. We went to San Diego. That’s the Pacific Ocean behind us. I didn’t think I’d ever see it in person—until I met Scott. He seemed to think you could get to see anyplace in the world if you just wanted to badly enough, and it didn’t matter if you were rich or not. You just had to want to do it.” She saw the puzzlement on his face and tried to explain.

“ ‘Honeymoon’ is what we call it when two people first get married and they go off together and get to know each other and . . .” She swallowed again, but this time the lump in her throat refused to go away. A tear zigzagged a path down her cheek. She didn’t pull away when he reached out to touch it. Drawing his finger back, he studied the moisture thoughtfully.